


Lovely

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:20:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal always talked about being half of a whole. Arthur isn't interested in Ariadne being a half of his whole. He wants her to be a full partner in <i>everything,</i> as dark and twisted as he can be.</p><p>For the prompt: <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/17669.html?thread=37596421#t37596421">I want a cold, manipulative bastard who is obsessive and possessive. But of course, charming as hell.</a> This is dark as all get out, with various flavors of mindfuckery, darkness and violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning The Training

Aversive punishments are generally held to create emotional disorders. This is actually part and parcel of what I need. Crafting the kind of partner that I require in this line work would need someone less inclined to feel sorry for the subject or the projections. She will need to be able to turn off her emotions to get the job done, and should be willing to do whatever is necessary to keep us safe.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #2

 

"She was lovely," Arthur had told Ariadne during the preparation for the Fischer job. She had been somewhat chastened by the remark, ashamed of her curiosity about Mallorie Cobb. Arthur had known why she was so interested; out of self preservation, she needed the team to work. She needed to be needed, needed to have Cobb put together and whole, needed to have everything work out. Otherwise, she would be lost and alone, out of sorts as she had been ever since she was five. Whatever talents she had would be ignored in the throng of her school, and she would stop being special.

Ariadne leaned into his touch when he grasped her wrist later, needing the simple human contact. That small sign was enough to let Arthur try for a kiss in the middle of the Fischer job, and it was impossible to miss her slight smile afterward.

She wasn't opposed to his attention. If anything, she craved it.

That was fine. That was more than fine, actually. Mal had been lovely, but with a little crafting, Ariadne would be _stunning._

***

Eames had to retain his forge of Browning as Yusuf left to hide alone in the first level of Fischer's dream, leaving Arthur and Ariadne alone. She was calm on the surface, but Arthur could tell that she was shaken from her time in limbo. "Come on, then," Arthur said briskly, tugging on her arm. "We should hide while it's calm." Ariadne followed his lead, much as she had while he had explained the mechanics of dream architecture, paradoxes and theory. She absorbed everything like a sponge, soaking up knowledge as well as the subtle cues to figure out her place within the team.

"It's all right to be scared of limbo," he told her as he helped her dry off in one of the safe houses built into the first level. She had shivered as much from his proximity as from the cold chills rolling down her spine. "It's a very real fear."

"Mal was there," she said, turning around to face him. She wasn't afraid, not the way he thought she might be. There was concern there, but not the abject terror she had described when she told him about how she had to blackmail her way onto the team after Mal had gone after her in Cobb's dreams at the warehouse.

She didn't need much urging to tell him about the shade killing Fischer on the third level or her appearance in limbo. Ariadne had urged Cobb to complete the job by going into limbo to save Fsicher, and had successfully gotten him out. Now she was frightened more for Cobb and Saito, as they were both trapped in limbo, but Ariadne was convinced that they would make it to consciousness by the end of the flight to LA.

Arthur looked at her with a sense of pride. She was beautiful and talented, was curious and not afraid of Mal's shade. She wanted a place to belong. She wanted a team to work with, a future where she had stability and a sense that she was special. Ariadne didn't feel that, didn't know that there were amazing things about her. She had bounced from one home to another since childhood; her college years in Paris have been the longest she had lived in one place. Arthur knew these details about her because he had tracked her down after she had returned to the warehouse. She had been quite the distraction, and he had prioritized her thorough background check more than Fischer's. It had been a mistake, but at least a mistake that had been salvaged.

Reaching out to touch her face, Arthur pulled her close. "After we wake up, we'll have to wait a while, until it's safe it's safe to contact each other for a job. But you're interested in dream share, aren't you? You want to stay in the business?"

"Yeah. This... This whole thing has been wonderful and awful at the same time, if that makes sense. Dreaming it, then seeing it... This is what I want to be doing."

There was a sense of wonder and awe in her voice, a wistful smile on her lips. She wanted to build things, to leave her permanent mark on the world. It was the hallmark of someone displaced for so long. She wanted roots. She wanted belonging.

Arthur smiled at her. This was perfect. He wanted a complete partner, and not even Mal had been able to fulfill that role. Ariadne could, once he was done with her.

"Then we'll start right away. Neither of us have any jobs lined up yet, so this is perfect. I'll teach you," he said, tracing the curve of her cheek with a fingertip. He was gratified by the sharp intake of breath, the flare in her lips and the way she stared up at his face with a rapt expression. "I'll teach you everything you need to know."

Oh, yes. This would work.

***

Behavior modification generally refers to techniques in increasing adaptive behavior. For my purposes, "adaptive behavior" would have to include various activities that the subject would consider completely contrary to her core sense of self. I would have to shape and model behavior for her, and add rewards liberally, since it would run counter to her natural impulses.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #2

 

"The first thing you need to do is get used to the violence that projections can do."

Ariadne didn't gulp or otherwise look nervous outwardly. It was the slight tension in her shoulders that told Arthur she didn't like the thought of what they could do; she had been stabbed by Mal, threatened on multiple occasions by other projections and had to hide from Fischer's for days. While he had stayed with her the entire time they were under, it had frayed her nerves. He hadn't been able to really start talking to her about practical matters like this until she was comfortably back in Paris.

"So I need to get your mind mad at me," she said, and Arthur could hear the thin thread of uncertainty in her voice. She didn't want him mad at her. She didn't care about Cobb being mad at her and hadn't thought twice about blurting out her observations about him. She had appeared overly confident as a result. But he had been a father figure, and none of hers had ever been particularly helpful.

Arthur smiled, only a slight curling at the corners of his lips. He mattered to her, and she didn't want to lose him. She needed him to tell her she was special, that there was something about her worth keeping, that she wasn't as disposable as she feared she was. He held out his hand to her and she took it. "Not mad," he corrected quietly. "They'll notice you. They'll see that you don't really belong here, not the same way that they do. The idea is that you have to be able to do to them what they plan to do to you."

Ariadne was pale. "You mean rip them apart?"

He pressed a Beretta into her hands. It fit comfortably, more so than his usual Glock would have. "Kill them. However you can. Whether it's shooting them, mutilating them, ripping them up, whatever it takes."

"Arthur..." she began uncertainly.

"They're not real," he reminded her in confident tones. "This isn't anything bad. This is helping you to survive long enough to get the job done, long enough to stay a step ahead of whatever subconscious security the subject might have."

"I don't know..."

"We're starting with guns. Partly for protection in dreams, but also partly for protection in the real world," Arthur told her, his fingers gently stroking the back of her hand. He was pairing a calming and comforting touch with the weapon, and over time she would be as comfortable with guns as he was. "If you're going to do this for a living, if we're going to work together like this, we need to know that you'll be able to be a part of the team, to protect us while we're sleeping if you're the one watching the clock, or to watch our backs if you're under with us. I know you weren't originally supposed to go under as part of the Fischer job, and you've never had to do anything like that before. I think protecting us would have been a lot easier for you if you'd had practice first."

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "That makes sense," she said, nodding decisively. She immediately straightened and looked more like the confident woman she had been while they were working in the warehouse. "I can do that."

Arthur smiled at her. "I know you can. You're capable of so many things." He let his smile widen a fraction, so that his eyes crinkled softly in the corners and his dimple flashed. He knew the kind of effect it had on others; Mal had always said he had a heart stopping smile, and he was using it to maximum effect. "I want you to be safe."

"Oh," she murmured, blindsided by the smile and the sudden rush of warmth beneath his words.

He leaned closer, not quite kissing her. There was only an inch between their mouths. "I can't lose you, Ariadne. Not when I've only just found you."

Ariadne was the one to lean forward, to press her lips against his. She might not have been experienced in the dream share arena, but she knew how to kiss. Holding the gun loosely in one hand, she wrapped her arms around him and opened her mouth, letting her tongue brush against his lips. Arthur deepened it, hands resting on the rise of her hips. He resisted the urge to pull her closer or dream up a bed to push her onto. There was no need to rush things. Ariadne was something to savor, a delicious package to unwrap slowly.

Her eyes sparkled when the kiss ended, and Arthur smiled, tasting her lip gloss on his tongue. "Are you ready?"

"Ready for anything," she told him boldly.

Just what he had wanted to hear.

He shifted the dream to a shooting range. It was safer for her to start out this way; eventually they would move on to projection hunting. He was simply laying the groundwork. She giggled a little nervously in the face of the safety equipment, but Arthur needed to start this right. Once she was comfortable, he could expand and play.

Arthur looked over her grip on the Beretta. It fit comfortably enough enough in her hands, and her grip was good. She held it naturally, and he looked over her stance as she started shooting at the paper targets at the end of the range. It was pretty good, though that didn't stop him from stepping behind her and running his hands along her arms to make a very slight correction. Her breath quickened, and he leaned down to keep his lips near the top of her head. He wanted to take her earlobes between his teeth and run his tongue along the shell of her ear, but the heavy headgear hid them from his view. She did well with this gun; he had deliberately chosen the one she had used in limbo to shoot Mal. He wanted her to recall her prior success and build on it.

Ariadne looked at him almost triumphantly when she finished the magazine and pulled off the safety gear. "I did pretty good."

"You're amazing," he said, a soft smile on his face. He gave her a different gun that was smaller and fit more easily in her hands. "Here. It's a Bersa Thunder with a modified magazine so it holds more cartridges. It's easy to find at gun shops and fires common cartridges. If you like how this one feels, we can get you one when we wake up."

She nodded and put the safety gear back on. He pressed himself against her back, moving to position his hands over hers. Arthur wrapped his arms around her torso, then slid one hand down to her stomach. "Lean forward a bit," he said, just loud enough so that she could hear him through the headgear. He pitched her forward slightly, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. "Like this. I've got you."

Arthur lost himself in the feel of her movements as she pulled the trigger, squeezing just hard enough to make the motions smooth. He wanted to slide his hands along her skin, feel the muscles shift and move beneath his hands as she fired the pistol. It was a small gun, perfect for her hands and easy to hide. He would have her practice with other weapons to get a feel for them. A Browning would give more kick and would have more cartridges per magazine, and his Glock would take a lot more adjusting to. Her hands were too small, too delicate. The angle of the magazine stock meant that there was more adjustment to aiming the weapon, and Arthur knew most people didn't like that very much.

She would be better than Mal, Arthur realized. He would have all of her, not just bits and pieces. He might not even have to do much crafting or shaping. She was so eager to please, aching to belong somewhere. Ariadne didn't seem to see the darkness lurking inside of him, the restlessness that only a job could calm. He needed to reshape things, to force order out of the chaos of this profession, to mold the darkness into something definable. He never could have had something like this in the real world, even if he flouted convention. It wasn't a disregard for rules, precisely. Murder and mayhem in the real world was messy and risky, with too many variables that were difficult to control for. In the dream world, stray projections could be suppressed. He controlled the environment, the level of involvement, how much he felt.

Mal had enjoyed control. She also enjoyed losing it on occasion, but she could never offer all of herself. She wanted the illusion of normalcy, the husband and children and happy home in the hills. Perhaps she didn't like knowing there was a dark hunger deep inside of her, that there were urges to harm and bleed and strip the skin from others. She never discussed it with Arthur when he figured it out, though they shared the games in dream levels. Dom Cobb had been the architect once upon a time, building levels that the two of them would practice in. Arthur and Mal worked so well in tandem that practice runs never needed the full time they had set on the PASIV. Sometimes that led to torturing projections, sometimes it was simply destroying the level or sitting back to watch it burn. Mal hid this from Dom, almost as if she was ashamed of it. As much as she tried to tell Arthur she wasn't, he knew on some level she had to be. She wouldn't have hidden it otherwise.

She hadn't been a full partner, not in the true sense of the word. They worked well together, understood each other, but Mal held back. She didn't offer all of herself to him, and she never would have. "You don't do this with Dom," he sneered at her once, coated in blood and bits of gore. "You can't show him this side of you. You're hiding yourself. What kind of marriage is that? You're not whole with him."

"Yes, I am," she had insisted, shaking the blood out of her hair. Her blue eyes had been piercing. "We're two halves of a whole. We're lovers. You and I aren't even that. You won't let it get to be that way."

Arthur refused to come second, that was why. She couldn't give all of herself to him, and there was no point in becoming lovers in the dream world. Arthur wouldn't have it in real life and he refused to settle. He wanted all of her, to be truly partners with someone that understood all of him. Mal didn't understand that, _wouldn't_ understand that. Her shade in Dom's head was born of guilt and confusion and horror, but she was a pale mockery of Mal's intense beauty and desires. The shade was nothing like Mal in the ways that counted, and Arthur inwardly sneered every time Dom seemed to think she was real.

Ariadne was better than Mal. Years in the foster care system had given her the ability to mold herself a little, to learn to please others so that she wouldn't get lost in the shuffle again. Her outer self was fluid, but her inner core had been tempered by loss and regret and failed hopes. She didn't lie, not in the ways that counted, and she always looked so secure and confident. It was what others liked to see, after all. The vulnerability was pushed down deep, but it was there. It was what led her to throw herself into everything, to give all of herself to people when they mattered to her.

And Arthur mattered to her. Of that he was absolutely certain.

He took the Bersa Thunder from Ariadne after a few magazines of practice and tossed it over his shoulder. It disappeared before it even hit the ground, and Arthur kissed her deeply. They staggered backward toward the wall of the range, and Arthur practically pinned her against the wall. He wasn't rough with her, but he wasn't gentle, either. Ariadne arched up to meet him, pushing her tongue into his mouth with reckless abandon. She grasped his vest, keeping him close when he would have backed away.

"Our first time together shouldn't be in a dream," he murmured against her jawline when he was able to break the kiss.

"You know, I almost thought, on the Fischer job," she began breathlessly, unbuttoning his vest awkwardly with one hand as she threaded her hands through his hair. "I thought it would've happened then. But it didn't."

"Would've been awkward, wouldn't it?" Arthur asked, unable to stop himself from sliding his hands across her stomach, hooking his fingers into the waistband of the corduroys she was wearing. "You were upset about Dom and limbo and having to shoot Mal. I didn't want to take advantage of you."

Ariadne pulled back long enough to look him in the eye. "Well, I'm telling you to take advantage of me now."

Arthur laughed and kissed her again. "In the real world, then. I want this to be _real._ I want this to _matter."_

She had a rapt and almost disbelieving expression on her face, as if she couldn't quite understand what he saw in her, that this was really going to happen. "It matters, Arthur."

He smiled and pressed the Beretta into her hands. She didn't like the way his Glock handled, and he didn't want any unpleasantness marring this experience for her. "Shoot me awake, then. And then come up with me, and we'll make sure it matters."

It was only a fraction of a second's hesitation, but then she pressed the gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger. Arthur fell, eyes glazed over before he faded from the dream, and then Ariadne pulled the trigger on herself.

She gasped awake, jerking in the chaise lounge she was lying on. Arthur had already removed his own line from the PASIV and was removing hers with the utmost care. His body covered hers completely as his mouth crashed down over hers in a possessive kiss. His hands were at her waist, undoing the buttons on her corduroys, and she was undoing the buttons of his vest. She laughed against his mouth when she fumbled with them, nearly tearing one off of the fabric. Laughing along with her, Arthur broke the kiss long enough to strip himself to the waist. She pulled off her shirt and pushed her corduroys from her waist, though her legs were trapped beneath him.

Arthur eyed her hungrily. It had been four months working together in close quarters for the Fischer job, and they were now nearly a month after it. Five months that he had known her, yet he was certain they belonged together. This was meant to be. She was the full partner that he had been waiting for.

He grasped her face in his hands to kiss her, leaving her to undo his trousers and push them down from his hips. Down went the briefs with them, and she ran her fingers over his bare skin possessively. _Yes._ This time she was the one to break the kiss, and she kept her gaze locked to his as she unhooked her bra and tossed it aside. They both shimmied out of their pants and underwear, and Arthur was both proud and amused by her eager gaze toward his erection. She stroked him with one hand and pulled him closer with the other. Arthur settled half on top of her, resting most of his weight on one forearm so he could play with a breast as he kissed her. Ariadne's breath shattered nicely as he did that, making him smile against her mouth. He dragged his hand down to the juncture of her thighs, making her moan in appreciation.

She was tight and wet at his touch, and oh so responsive. She spread her legs wider for him, throwing a leg around his hips. Her hand tightened around him fractionally as he pushed his fingers deep into her, and she broke their kiss to cry out when he started a fast and hard rhythm. Arthur watched her expression closely, changing the rhythm slightly and gauging her response. Ariadne clenched down hard around his fingers, gasping and mewling in pleasure. A few more strokes and she shattered beneath him, crying out and clinging to his shoulders. He didn't stop, simply watched her arch up against him as he rode her orgasm and pushed her higher. She wasn't coherent enough to keep her grip on him, and she moved her hand to his hip, clinging to him with her fingers digging in hard.

She was tight when he pushed deep into her, making her gasp and moan. She bucked against him, mouth seeking his neck to kiss. He drove into her, hard and fast, a pace she easily matched. Her inner muscles clenched down tight around his cock, and Arthur let out a groan at the feel of it. She wasn't an expert, but she wasn't a virgin either. He had seen the progress reports from counseling sessions she had as a teenager, the remarks about sullen attitudes, underage drinking and possible sexual activity she never admitted to. Knowing her as he did, he believed those session notes. Ariadne wasn't the kind of girl that slept around to be liked. She was the kind of girl that tried to make others happy and like her by doing favors or being agreeable.

Ariadne bucked wildly as she approached her orgasm. She gasped and writhed beneath him, hands tight on his ass to pull him deeper inside. Arthur grasped the back of her head to tilt it so that he could kiss her. She stiffened when she finally came, then seemed to melt into the chaise beneath him. She smiled up at him lazily as he continue to thrust into her wet heat, and she tilted her hips. Arthur let out a strangled groan; that had been just enough to make him come as well.

Collapsing heavily on top of her, Arthur struggled to regain his breath. Ariadne had her arms around his back and her legs around his waist, not willing to let go of him yet. "That was amazing," she said breathlessly. It would have stroked his ego if he cared about that kind of thing. It wasn't that he didn't care at all, because he wanted her to be satisfied with all aspects of their relationship. It was just that it mattered more that she felt a connection and wanted to be full and equal partners. He could have sex from anyone willing. It was the partnership that mattered.

Arthur kissed her, slowly and deeply, hearing her low pleased moan. "You bring the best out of me," he murmured when he kissed her neck.

She giggled softly, rubbing the skin of his back gently. "I do?" She continued to giggle as he nodded against her jaw. "Hm... That's nice."

"That you bring out the best in me?"

Ariadne nodded, a goofy post-coital grin on her face. "Because I think you bring out the best in me, too."

Arthur pulled back and grinned down at her. "Really?" Shifting his weight onto one forearm, he traced the curve of her cheek with his fingers. He looked at the smile on her face, feeling a pleased sensation settle into his chest. Ariadne took his thumb between her lips and ran her tongue along the pad. Arthur smiled fondly at her, then leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Then this will be perfect."

And it would be. He would be certain of that.

***  
***


	2. Playing For Keeps

Basic conditioning stresses positive reinforcement to increase the likelihood of a particular behavior, with negative reinforcement or punishment to extinguish it. The obvious positive reinforcement would be to give a sense of belonging and relationship. This would mean physical affection and praise for following through with all suggested exercises under the guise of training for the job.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #3

 

Ariadne stretched out, her lithe frame shifting in the shadows. She smiled softly when she noted Arthur watching her with avid interest. "Like what you see?"

"Oh, yes," Arthur said, lounging on the bed.

She turned and moved back to crawl across the bed. "Why was I getting up again?"

"You were saying something about having to go home," Arthur told her, pulling her flush against him. "Though you can stay here."

She was tempted, he could tell. There was something in the way her gaze shifted over his face, weighing his words. "It's probably too soon," she demurred after a moment. They had only been sleeping together for two weeks in between training with various pistols and shotguns. "Not that I don't want to, but... It's soon."

"You don't want me thinking you're easy," Arthur said, resting his hand on her chest. He rubbed his palm over her nipple, smiling slightly when her breath caught. "I don't, you know. And if you think about all the time we've spent in dreams... It's been probably closer to a year that we've known each other. If not longer."

"Does that count?"

"Of course it does." Arthur ran his fingers over the rise of her breast. "The training counts, doesn't it? You were great at the range this morning, so you know that all the dream training is teaching you what you need to know."

"Like muscle memory," she gasped, leaning into his touch.

"Exactly." He let his other hand slide gently down her stomach. "Think you're ready for more than guns?"

Ariadne shifted into him, her breath coming in short pants as his fingers slid between the curls at her mons. "Like what?"

"Hand to hand. Knife work." He traced her folds gently, teasing her as her breath fractured. "Other ways to keep the team safe if you don't have a gun or run out of ammo."

"Yes," she whimpered softly. Her head fell back as his fingers found her, soft and wet and ready for him. "God, Arthur," she moaned, reaching out to grasp his shoulders for balance. "Yes, please, yes."

"To the training? Or to me touching you like this?" he prodded, voice lazy.

"Both," she whimpered. "Please... Don't stop..."

"I don't plan to," he said, voice calm and even. He looked at her, almost appraising her response. She had molded herself to his body when he had stood over her at the range that morning, the same way he had done in dreams. "That's why I'd like you here. If you lived with me, we can have this all the time."

Ariadne shuddered at his touch on her clit, and her breath was ragged. "But..."

"Maybe it feels fast in the real world, but we've known each other longer than that," he said softly, nearly crooning. "There are more reasons, of course," he added, dragging his finger across her clit again. "If you need them."

"M-more?" she stuttered, shuddering over him.

Arthur smiled. "Mm-hm." He thrust his fingers inside of her and curled them into that spot that made her keen loudly, shaking with the force of her orgasm. "Security, of course."

Ariadne sagged against him, nearly boneless. "What?"

Shifting her position so that she could straddle him, Arthur looked up at her with an ardent expression. "We're safer together, Ariadne. I trust you with my life, you know." He guided himself into her and urged her to sink down over his cock. "I can teach you how I do my home security, which is important. We can set up a security detail around your place, of course, but my place is a little more isolated." He ran one hand from her hip to her breast and pulled lightly at her nipple. "There would be fewer innocent bystanders here if something goes to hell."

"Oh God," she moaned, rocking against him. He was full and thick inside of her, and her hands restlessly moved over his thighs as her back arched. He rubbed at her breasts, tilting his hips up to deepen her down stroke. "There, that, that, oh God, Arthur..."

Arthur grit his teeth to keep from coming as she tightened around him. She was close, very close, painfully close, and he was a hair's breadth away from spilling inside her. She had the shots every three months, and Arthur had initially said he thought this would help them feel closer to one another. She had believed it and craved his touch, though the lack of a condom meant he felt everything that much more intensely.

Ariadne came with a cry, her whole body shaking. Arthur ran his hands over her torso as he thrust up into her. Once, twice, then he was spilling into her with a groan. He lay limp against the bed, and Ariadne bent over him, clutching his shoulders in her hands and tucking her face into the column of his throat. "It's not fair that you can still think coherently during sex," she said once she got her breath back.

He laughed and stroked her back gently, tracing her spine with his fingertips. "Only because I've thought about it for a long time."

She propped herself up on one elbow. "You have?"

Reaching up to cradle her face, Arthur nodded. "I think about you a lot." It brought a pleased flush to her cheeks, but he didn't even need to lie. He thought about her. He planned things out at least a dozen steps ahead, and he couldn't help but think about the various ways he could shape her responses as he taught her what she needed to know to stay alive in the business. He ran his thumb along her lips. "Don't you?"

"Think about you?"

"Or _us,"_ he asked, eyebrow arched. "Together, I mean. Like this."

Ariadne smiled, and Arthur could almost see the hope burning in her chest, lighting her up from the inside. She was luminous as a result, as if her skin was golden and shining in the fading sunlight. "So that's why you want me to move in?"

His hand ran from her face to the slide of her shoulder down into her arm. "There's lots of reasons, really."

"Always trying to be logical," Ariadne teased, lips curling into a pleased smile. She thought she knew him. Arthur knew that there were hidden depths she hadn't seen yet, couldn't even guess at. They hadn't progressed far enough along that he could safely show her everything. But eventually he could. Eventually, he could bare himself to his empty soul and she would mirror it back to him.

"Would you have me any other way?" he challenged playfully.

"No," she murmured, shaking her head with a lovely smile on her face. She was more than half in love with him already. It wouldn't take long to push her the rest of the way. "No, I wouldn't." Arthur grinned up at her, and she laughed. "Yes, I'll move in with you."

Everything was going according to plan.

***

The physical conditioning has progressed smoothly, and she doesn't object to the first aid training or trauma responses. This pleases me; there is no point in trying to get a larger team together if she can perform many of the same functions that I do over the course of a job. If things go wrong, I fully expect her to be able to cover some of my duties. It may become essential to have her attempt a simple extraction on her own. It's a test, but one I'm sure she can pass. She is a gifted dreamer and highly skilled when she applies herself in the correct manner. I simply need to channel those instincts appropriately, and she will be flawless.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #4

 

Ariadne was shooting at the dream range easily, switching between a half dozen different pistols. She still hated Arthur's Glock, since it felt too large and angled for her, but she was getting more proficient at the double trigger pull. That way, if she ever had to take his weapon, she would be able to fire it. Arthur leaned against the wall of the range, watching her move with the same easy grace she designed or built her mazes. She was comfortable with shooting guns, as long as the focus was the defense of others. She still had trouble with the idea of shooting someone in cold blood. She could obviously shoot if defending herself. Exposure was making it easier to tolerate the weapons, but he would have to change some of the fundamental wiring in her responses.

Of course, commenting that it had been amazing for her to go after Fischer to complete the job while they had been together on the first level was possibly the start of that. She was so invested in the team, after all. She had needed to hear that, needed to have that kind of behavior normalized and praised. He wanted her to really feel part of something, like they were all a family. It helped calm her after the terror that was limbo, and it had cemented the trust that she already had in him. It had also broken something else in his chest; a few more of his ties to Cobb had been severed over the course of the Fischer job. Cobb had put them all in danger without telling them and never once thought it was the wrong thing to do. For all that Arthur had done for him, he would have thought his service merited at least a warning about limbo before that offhand comment on the first level of Fischer's dream.

She turned to him with a triumphant smile when her magazine was empty. "Enjoying the view?" she asked, a saucy grin on her face.

Arthur returned her smile easily. He was pleased with her progress, with the lines and curves of her body. He enjoyed watching her; the graceful, fluid motions roused more emotions than just lust. What he wanted was more than just animal attraction, and she was a complete package.

"I always do," he said, warmth infusing his tone. He came to her side and slid an arm around her waist. "I'm glad the training is helping, too."

Ariadne looked up at him with a soft smile. "I'm going to be involved in more jobs eventually," she said, running her hands along his chest. "I need to be able to pull my own weight."

Arthur walked her backward until her back hit the wall of the dream range. He hovered over her, but she didn't find it intimidating at all. He traced her smile with his fingertips. "I have never thought you were incapable. Don't let anyone ever make you feel that way, all right?"

"You're always so good to me," Ariadne murmured, a half smile on her face. She turned Arthur abruptly so that his back hit the wall as she dropped to her knees and made Arthur's pants and underwear disappear. "So let me be good to you."

He let out a sigh of contentment as her mouth closed around his flaccid penis. She sucked at him, her hands light on his hips. His erection grew in her mouth, and she enthusiastically sucked and licked at him. Arthur let one hand stroke the top of her head, and he sighed again as pleasure flooded him. She knew what he liked at this point, and she dove straight in, rather as she had done with everything else. He tugged on her hair lightly, and she didn't shake him off. Instead, she sucked harder, tongue sliding across the length of his cock and curling slightly around his width. He was making soft noises, until he groaned a warning to her. Ariadne ignored it, then swallowed him down when he came in spurts down the back of her throat. Arthur sagged against the wall and looked down at her smug expression. "Uh..."

"Never thought I'd leave you speechless," she joked, moving up smoothly from her kneeling expression. She snuggled against him, a pleased and satisfied smile on her face even though he was the one that had just come.

"Well, you always take my breath away."

It was a sappy line, but it was one that suffused her cheeks with a gentle blush. Arthur liked that look on her face, liked the way she was pleased with his efforts to make her happy. He ran the backs of his fingers across her cheek, and she leaned into his touch.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," Arthur murmured, knowing she would think it was a romantic line. She turned to kiss his fingers, and he smiled at her. "Should we continue with training, or just give it up as lost and go topside?"

Ariadne leaned forward and gave him a kiss before pulling back to look at her watch. "We have another hour in the dream. Might as well do a little more range time, I guess."

"Actually, I was thinking you've had enough of that for today. Yesterday you were already doing wiring and security." She nodded at his pause. "How are your first aid skills?"

She shrugged. "Band aids and Neosporin?"

"Then we'll probably have to focus on that for a bit." He took in her dubious expression. "We'll grab a projection and teach you to take care of stab wounds, stitches, bullet wounds, that kind of thing. We usually try to be careful in the real world, but sometimes you can't prepare enough, and there are always things that can go wrong with it. It would help if you could take care of the team this way, too."

"It makes sense," Ariadne said slowly. "But we'd be torturing my subconscious for that. I don't know how I feel about that."

One step at a time, Arthur reminded himself. "Then I'll be hurt," he told her in a quiet voice. "I'll walk you through it."

"I don't know..."

Arthur stepped back, looking at her reassuringly. "It's going to be okay, Ariadne. It's just a dream." He took out his Glock and pressed it against his thigh, making sure to miss the femoral artery. "Ready?"

"No!"

He gave her a sad smile. "You usually aren't in the real world either." He pulled the trigger and fell to the ground with a cry of pain.

Ariadne panicked, hands fluttering and eyes wild with shock and disbelief. "How could you _do_ that?!" she shrieked.

Arthur pointed to a cabinet on the wall. "Dream up a trauma kit and I'll walk you through how to take care of this." He grit his teeth against the pain of the wound, knowing that this wasn't real. He could gird himself against just about anything in a dream, and had indeed managed to live through worse at Mal's hands. Cobb's shade had done awful things to him, to be sure, but the real Mal had been downright vicious in contrast.

Hands shaking, Ariadne followed his clipped directions. He savored the feel of her fingers against his skin, responding to the instructions. She was still in shock, but she would pick it up in time. He just had to get her used to the idea of blood in the dream, of the damage that guns or knives could do.

Once they woke, Ariadne launched herself at Arthur and pummeled his chest weakly, sobbing. "Don't you ever do that to me again!" she cried, tears in her eyes. "I can't stand to see you hurt like that!"

He cradled her against his chest, rocking her gently. "I know. I'm sorry I had to do it that way, I really am." He made soothing noises until she calmed. "So many things can happen in a dream. I want you to be prepared. I want you to be the best, Ariadne. I want it to be that nothing fazes you, nothing scares you when you're on a job. That you're always prepared."

She looked up at him, eyes wet and shining. "How can you be prepared for something like this?"

"Repetition," he admitted, stroking her face. "Exposure. Knowing what you can and can't do if it happens for real."

Ariadne shook her head and clung to his chest. "I can't stand see you like that. I don't ever want you hurt."

Arthur wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. "If things go well, it won't ever happen. But I don't want to make you promises I can't keep. I don't want to lie to you that way. You mean too much to me for that." He stroked her back gently. "I wish there was some other way around it. I really do. I don't want you hurt. If there was a way to put all this knowledge into your mind, to get you that kind of confidence that you'd be able to do this for the team..."

"I hate this." She shook her head against his chest. "I feel so fucking helpless."

"You're anything but helpless, Ariadne," he contradicted her. If anything, her words buoyed his spirits. "You're a fighter, you know that. Your instincts are good. You're fantastic at what you do, and when you're pushed, you can do anything. This... We don't have to repeat this right now. I don't want to stress you too much that way. But there's a point to this. It's so you _won't_ feel helpless if this ever happens in real life. It's so you'd have the same kind of training that I do if this ever happens."

Ariadne pulled back and looked at Arthur's earnest expression. "You really don't think less of me, do you?"

"No, I don't."

She pressed her lips together and nodded. "Then we do this again, before I lose my nerve and chicken out."

Arthur smiled at her. "It'll get easier, I promise."

"Should it really get easier?" Ariadne asked softly. "Should I really not care about you getting hurt?"

"It's not that," he disagreed. "It's not that you wouldn't care about me getting hurt or not. It's that you know what to do if it happens. It's that you'd know how to save my life. It's so you don't feel helpless to save me when you know there's something you can do about it. It gets easier in the sense that you can change the outcome."

Ariadne looked up him and squared her shoulders, mentally girding herself for the worst. "Then let's go under for an hour real time and get to work."

"That's my girl," Arthur murmured softly as he set the timer on the PASIV. As ever, his touch was gentle when he slid the needles beneath her skin. He locked eyes with hers before he hit the button on the PASIV. "Just let me know if you need to cut the session short, all right? Don't feel like you have to go overboard."

"I'll handle it," Ariadne told him firmly. "I promise."

He nodded and hit the button, then laid back down on his own chaise. As the medication took effect, he couldn't help but let his lips curl into a smile. She was pushing herself so hard because she wanted to be with him, body and soul. She _wanted_ to be full partners with him, which was wonderful. Maybe it wouldn't take too much manipulation at all.

***

It's impossible to tell if all of the conditioning has settled into place. There are few challenges that would test the new behavior patterns, though continued practice runs in the dreaming appear to be just as straightforward as the conditioning setting. She is still fixated on the appearance of friendships despite all evidence to the contrary; that is easily explained by the lack of outside connections. Solidifying appropriate friendships is likely next on the agenda. Those more active in the dream share arena would be appropriate. For all of his inappropriate comments, Eames would even be a worthwhile acquaintance for her. I'll go through my contacts list at some other point; dealing with Cobb is tedious and is not likely to end well. He mangled everything he had a hand in, and I will not allow him to ruin what I have with "A."  
\- excerpt from personal journal #6

 

"I was wondering if you know what became of young Ariadne," Eames said, his voice warm and light over the phone.

"What makes you think I know what happened?" Arthur asked, eyebrow arched even though the forger couldn't see it. Ariadne was out doing errands, and he was in his apartment going through his weapons and ammunition in her absence.

Eames snorted. "You're a point man, Arthur. I would expect that you have information on everyone you've ever worked with and keep tabs on the ones you think are worth working with again." He paused, and Arthur didn't contradict him. "I don't suppose you have contact information, do you? I have a job where their architect is crap. I refuse to work with the wanker. I know Ariadne's young and only peripherally involved in the business, but she handled herself rather well on that job. I'd like to work with her again."

It was a fairly straightforward and honest answer. Arthur could appreciate that, even though he felt a fierce sense of possessiveness. No one got to work with Ariadne without him, without his say-so. He needed to be near her. He needed to know she was okay, that she was taking to their training well. He needed to know that others wouldn't try to run roughshod over her or inadvertently break her. He needed to know that the others she was working with wouldn't act like Cobb did.

"Who's your point?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me."

Eames sighed, and Arthur could practically hear the eyes rolling in his head. "I'm working with Clive and Serge out of Monaco."

"Clive is an idiot," Arthur said sharply. "Convince Serge that I'm better and I'll get you Ariadne."

"What? It's not my job, Arthur. I'm not the one calling the shots."

"Yes, I realize that. But of the two, it's likely Serge that got you the job, right?" Eames grunted an assent. "Tell him I'm better than Clive, and we'll come down to Monaco and work with you. Otherwise, I won't find Ariadne for you."

"What the hell, Arthur? Since when did you hide assets like this?"

"She's not an _asset._ She's a human being and she's under my protection. Got it?"

Eames waited a beat. "Are you shagging her? Is that it?"

"Goodbye, Eames," Arthur said tightly, pulling the phone away from his ear.

"Wait, wait!"

Arthur put the phone back to his ear, aware he was scowling. "What?"

"Look, I've never seen you be protective of anyone before."

"Cobb was able to look out for himself, and you've never seen him ignoring my warnings before."

Eames blew out a breath. "Point for you, then. But this is different," he continued. "You _care._ Anyone else, you would've just tossed me a number and told me to faff off because you were waiting for a more important call."

"I'm still wondering why I haven't done that yet."

The chuckle was warm and amused in Arthur's ear, but it didn't loosen his scowl yet. "You're miles better than Clive, I'll admit that. Are you ready to offer up yourself and Ariadne to a job if you're sweet on her?"

"She wants to work," Arthur told him shortly. "But I won't have it be for just anyone until she can definitely handle herself."

"So you'll let her take this job?"

"Only if I come with her, Eames," Arthur said. He looked over the magazines on his desk and nodded at them firmly. They looked fine, he was just doing this to keep himself busy in Ariadne's absence. "Talk to Serge, then get back to me."

"You never cease to surprise me, Arthur."

"For someone so adept at human behavior, you should really know better."

"Funny how most peoples' tells simply don't work on you. Perhaps you're too much a stick in the mud."

"Or perhaps you're not the best after all."

"That pains me, Arthur. Truly it does."

Arthur snorted. "You'll live."

Eames laughed. "So I will, that's for sure. I'll get back to you about the job with Serge." He was all business again. "Not terribly nice, hoarding a brilliant architect like that."

"Jealous you didn't think of it first, you mean."

"Something like that."

"If harm comes to her in any way during this job, I'll break you," Arthur told him calmly. "There won't be any other warning than this."

"You're serious."

"Deadly serious," Arthur agreed, no particular inflection in his tone. "Are we understood?"

"Bloody hell. You're in love with her."

"Are we understood?" he asked icily, not bothering to correct Eames' mistake.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do understand." Eames blew out a breath. "It's not that kind of a job, Arthur, I promise. I may pull your leg on occasion, but I'm serious about a job. You know that."

"I do. That's the only reason why I'm even talking to you about it right now."

Eames paused. "You're really serious about her, then? I've never known you to be this serious about anyone."

"Goodbye, Eames," Arthur said pointedly.

"You really are," he breathed in amazement. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"I'm ending this phone call unless you have something useful," Arthur warned.

"Right, right. I'll get back to you. And just to prove how nice I am to you, I won't even make comments on your budding romance with the delectable Ariadne."

"Let's just put it this way, Eames," Arthur began evenly. "You do anything that sends trouble her way, you'll never forge again."

"Second time you've threatened me in five minutes," Eames noted. "Definitely true love. All right, then. I'll ring you next week, most likely. I'll have job specifics by then."

"Much appreciated."

Arthur didn't bother to glare at his phone after hanging up. Eames thought he knew people, but that wasn't always accurate.

Love? Ha. That was a useless, feeble emotion. It did nothing but twist people up into knots, blind them, cut them off at the knees and make them unable to function. This wasn't love at all that he felt. This was stronger, deeper, and much more vital. It was more important than love, and would last much longer. Arthur would never bend or break in response to love, and he knew that Ariadne was better than that as well. She was special, and she mattered.

It didn't matter what other people called it, as long as they respected the bond the two of them shared.

***  
***


	3. Adding To The Repertoire

Compromise may become necessary; "A" is still very idealistic and thinks in such a normative kind of way. She needs to realize that there are significant risks to remaining in this field, and that such outdated concerns will only hold her back. The occasional compromise may bind her more closely to me, however. It may build on the emotional connection she is likely to feel.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #7

 

"I wonder what the Cobbs are doing," Ariadne murmured, looking up from her sketchbook.

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked, looking perturbed. "Why would you want to do that?"

"After all we did, after all that time you spent with Dom Cobb... Don't you want to know if Phillipa and James are even all right?"

Arthur put down the book he was reading. "They're fine. They've always been fine, with Marie or Stephen looking after them. No matter what, the kids were always okay. It's Dom that didn't seem to have his head on straight."

"What are you talking about?"

"You were right all along, Ariadne. I didn't see it until it was too late, but there were things seriously wrong with him." Arthur could feel his face tighten in anger. "I'd worked with him for years, and on this he ever once let on how truly dangerous it was to go into Fischer's mind. Any one of us could have died and gone to limbo and never come out. Something bad could've happened to you."

She turned and came to his side, a look of concern on his face. "You were fine with how he was before. Or at least, if not fine, then you could handle it. What changed?"

"I suppose I never looked at it before. I just... You were absolutely right. I never questioned how he operated, never questioned why he treated me the way he did." Arthur was eerily calm as he looked at her. "He didn't say a word after we all parted ways at LAX. All the other jobs, even if he had to leave and look like we never knew each other, he would call or text when he got to a safe place. I would do the same. This time? I let him know I was safe and not followed, just as I always do. He didn't bother to contact me once."

"Oh, Arthur..."

"It was always about going back home to the kids. So you were right. He had issues, and I just never saw them." That, and finding Ariadne meant he didn't have to hang onto Cobb for the shallow memories of Mal. He didn't need to hang onto the past. He needed to build a future.

"Well, I'd like to know how the kids are doing."

"Contact Stephen."

Ariadne had that stubborn tilt to her jaw that he was starting to get to know very well. "I'd like to see them, to see that it was all worth it."

"I really don't want to see Cobb anymore," Arthur said, voice flat and cold. It was final; he had shut down once he had made the decision in LA. He was surprised it took this long for Ariadne to realize it.

"Look. I understand you're angry with him. But you knew them before it all went to hell and Mal killed herself. You knew the kids. Don't you at least want to see them again?"

"No."

"I want to see them. I'll go without you if I have to."

He took in her gaze and turned away. "Why does it matter so much?"

Ariadne took his hand in hers. "He hurt you, Arthur. I get it. But maybe you need to give him a chance to explain why. Maybe that will help, maybe it won't. But he needs to know how much it hurt you." She brought his hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles. "He can't change if you don't let him know."

"Maybe it's not worth fixing," Arthur snarled, glaring at her.

She pulled him into her arms, startling him with the intensity of her gaze. "It's _always_ worth fixing, Arthur. Always. You can't just leave him behind. It will only hurt if you do."

He melted a little into her embrace, things clicking into place in his mind. She needed closure. She needed to know that her efforts hadn't been in vain, that the father figure of the group found his family, that the children wouldn't be left alone or bounced around from place to place. The children were her weakness; she was identifying with them on some level, and she needed to know they were all right. If they were, she could be, too.

Arthur blew out a breath. "I'll go," he began slowly, sounding more reluctant than he felt. "If you agree to the rest of the wound training."

Ariadne blanched. "Arthur..."

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't necessary." He ran his arms around her. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't think you could take it. I've been on the receiving end of worse, I promise you. Projections can get nasty. You didn't see the half of it on the Fischer job. They were all using guns and most of them were kept back once we had Fischer working with us. It doesn't usually happen that way. Usually they get up close and personal. Usually it's a mess if it all goes to hell in a dream." He pressed his face against her neck, feeling her shiver in his arms. "I don't want it to happen to you, but I want you to know what to do if it does. I don't ever want you helpless in a dream."

"I won't be," Ariadne told him, running her hands down his spine. "I promised you."

"You're still so new to the job, though. I can't... I can't lose you."

Her expression softened and she kissed him. "You won't lose me. You won't ever."

He kissed her back, deeply and thoroughly, his hands tangled in her hair to keep her there. He shifted position so that he covered her body with his, and Ariadne made a soft, pleased sound deep in her throat. "I love you, Arthur," she murmured when he moved down to kiss her throat. "I love you so much."

"You mean everything to me, Ariadne," he said, moving to hover over her. His gaze was intense and sincere, and she trembled slightly. He seized her mouth hungrily, and she responded in kind. "I'll go if you want me to," he said, kissing her jaw. "If it means that much to you."

Her smile was soft and sad. "Then I'll do that training, even if I think it's nasty. Deal?"

"Deal," Arthur laughed, letting it light up his eyes. He could deal with Cobb. He had gotten the better end of the bargain.

***

Phillipa and James Cobb were shy around Arthur at first, but Phillipa remembered him after a moment. "You used to work with Mama," she whispered, eyes wide.

Arthur looked down at himself. He was in corduroys and a button down shirt, much more relaxed than when he worked with Mal and Dom before. "I look different, but yes. I met you when you were very small," he said, hunkering down to see her eye to eye. She had Mal's eyes, and the sharp gaze assessing him was hers. Then she squinted the way Dom did, and he laughed. "You have the exact same laugh that you used to."

Ariadne looked so pleased with him when he stood up. He couldn't be angry with her for making him come with her to LA. The weather was beautiful, the kids were as lovely as he remembered Mal being and Dominic Cobb was actually ready to apologize for being selfish and thoughtless. He supposed that was all Ariadne's doing, but it was thoughtful just the same.

Cobb took Arthur aside while Ariadne was playing with the children. "She's good with them," he commented, a tinge of sadness in his voice. "She's going to stay in the business, isn't she?"

Arthur nodded, not seeing any point in lying about it. "I'm teaching her tricks I've picked up over the years," he said, shrugging. "She'll be a master, and I'll make sure she's protected at all times. I won't let her get lost, but I think she's pretty good at finding herself anyway."

"Yeah, she is." He looked at Arthur a little sadly. "Just... Be careful, will you? I told myself I wouldn't try to warn you off a relationship in the business, but I keep wanting to."

Holding back the angry retort he wanted to make, Arthur merely eyed Cobb warily. "You don't trust me, do you?"

Cobb looked horrified. "No, Arthur! No, it's not that. Of course I trust you. I've _always_ trusted you. After Mal died... If you weren't there, I don't know how I could've survived it." He shook his head decidedly. "I mean it in the sense of dreaming with someone you love. You care about her," Cobb said, cutting off Arthur's inevitable protest. "I can see that. I see how much she means to you." He looked over at Ariadne and the children, waving in response to her grin. "It gets risky, even if you don't mean it to." He looked over at Arthur with a pained expression. "Don't be me and Mal, Arthur. Learn from our mistakes."

Cobb was _concerned_ about him. The knowledge burned like acid. "Dom..."

"I know you're probably insulted," he continued in a rush. "That's why I didn't call or say anything. I knew it would sound wrong. But I can't help it. I worry about you, Arthur. You've always been like family. You and Mal and I were such a solid team before everything fell apart." Dom looked back toward the house behind him. "I thought I could handle it on my own, and that was a mistake. Please don't make my mistake, Arthur."

Arthur looked at Cobb, face impassive. "I won't. I promise."

It seemed to ease Cobb's mind, and the worry lines faded slightly. "Okay." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "I know you'll take care of her. I don't worry about bullets or security or any of that. It's what you do best, after all. I worry about the things you can't control. I worry that I should never have gone to Miles, never asked for one of his students."

"You couldn't build, Dom," Arthur reminded him. "Of course you'd ask Stephen for help. You always asked him for help."

"I look at my children and I never doubt that I did the right thing in trying to come back," he said slowly. "But I've burned a lot of bridges to get here. I've ruined lives, and I've done horrible things to people I care most about." He looked at Arthur in concern. "Can I fix that?"

It was probably as close to an apology as he was going to get, and it was more than he thought he would ever have. He supposed he had Ariadne to thank for this.

"Yes, I think you can."

The relieved look on Cobb's face was almost worth the lie. He had never seen Mal for the sinister beauty she truly possessed, he had never been able to see past the calm façade that Arthur put on for show. He was selfish and only interested in how much he could get from others, how much he could take. It gave him the single minded drive to succeed, and now it was only years later he could count the cost. Now that he was safely out of the game, he was sorry for all he had done. He was a man with regrets, and they would always weigh him down.

But Arthur was kinder than he was. He could give Cobb the illusions he needed to move on. He could afford to be generous. He was the one that had Ariadne as a full and equal partner. Cobb had never known that, and would never know that. Arthur felt sorry for him, though that would never go over well. Cobb still had his pride, however wounded and tattered it was.

Cobb was half of a whole, his other half ripped away from him and shattered. Arthur would certainly learn from his example; he wasn't looking for his other half. He had a partner, someone he could share himself with completely.

***

Arthur looked at the bloody knife in Ariadne's hand and then down at himself. His intestines were pooling around his legs in steaming knots, and he was driven to his knees. "That..." he gasped, hands immediately reaching to pull the loops back into his abdomen. "You're a natural."

She was shaking, and the knife clattered to the ground. Heedless of the blood all over her, she grasped his face in her hands. "Are you all right? Are you really all right?"

"This is just a dream," he reminded her.

"It feels real."

"Dreams always feel real while we're in it," Arthur said, turning to kiss her bloody palms. The blood smeared all over his face and mouth, but he didn't care. She was here, she was doing this, and her first slice had been _fantastic._ "Finish it," he urged her, tilting his throat up for her to take.

"I can't..."

"Projections will keep coming. This won't be enough to keep them down."

Tears tracked their way through the smeared blood on her face. "Why did I say I would do this again?" she sobbed, shaking her head. She sank down to her knees as well, blinking back tears. "I can't do this to you, even in dreams. I can't hurt you this way."

"You can put me back together anytime you want," he urged her, pulling one of her hands against his abdomen. "You cut me open, you can put me back together. I want you to do this. It's like building something in here. It's the same way with anyone in the dream. You can rip them up or put them back together."

"Arthur..."

He pressed her hand further inside his steaming insides, loops slipping through her slicked fingers to fall onto the ground. It was agonizing to feel this, but he couldn't help but smile up at her. "This is _lucid_ dreaming, Ariadne. You make the rules of the dream. Even if I'm the dreamer, if they're going to be my projections and not yours. You can change things. You can reset the rules. You can do whatever you want. You're not bound by time or space or morality. It doesn't apply here."

She pulled her hand out of his gaping gut and tried to concentrate on his abdomen. The loops of intestine pushed back into his body, the fascia sliding back into place, then the muscle. The skin knitted back together, and Arthur fell backward. The pain was exquisite, something he hadn't truly felt in years. The real Mal had disemboweled him once, long ago, and left him to bleed out and die of hypovolemic shock. She had stood above him, gloating, writing his name in his own blood with the toes of her sandals. "You asked for pain, Arthur," she said, eyes sparkling. "Do you think this is enough?"

Enough and not enough, never enough.

Arthur gasped and tugged Ariadne's hand, making her lose her balance and fall down on top of him. Heedless of his blood coating them, he kissed her on the mouth, tongue sliding in to touch hers. He pulled at her shirt and jeans, and she seemed to pick up on his urgency. Their clothes disappeared in the blink of an eye, and he rose up to suckle a breast as she straddled his waist. Fingers slick with blood and gore, Arthur thrust them up into her wet heat, feeling her clench down hard around him with need. It wasn't seeing him in pain that was getting her hot and bothered, he knew. It was seeing him whole again, the relief was palpable in her touch.

He sucked hard, tasting blood and her skin in equal measure. She was slick and wet, her body grasping at his fingers as her hands clutched at his shoulders for balance. She came suddenly, crying out and throwing her head back. Arthur kept up the punishing pace, switching to suck at her other breast. Ariadne didn't even seem to notice the puddle they were kneeling in, the coating on their skin. When he tipped her onto her back, she didn't notice that either. She welcomed him into her body greedily, her mouth attacking his with abandon. Ariadne pulled him close, as if their bodies could meld together, as if this could undo the hurt she'd caused him.

When she came with a hoarse cry, Arthur slipped out of her and turned her onto her hands and knees. She made a startled sound at the blood beneath them, but then she cried out at the feel of him sliding into her, hitting all those spots that made her keen and purr. Ariadne's hands scrabbled on the slippery ground, and she pushed back against Arthur's thrusts. "Why... How could you...?" she gasped, shaking her head.

"The feel of you," Arthur ground out, grasping her hips to keep her steady. He was smearing more blood all over her, shockingly red against the pale skin. "Perfect after this," he panted, picking up the pace as she constricted tighter around him. "Perfect all the time."

Ariadne's arms gave out, and she collapsed down to her elbows. She fell into the puddle of blood and inhaled some of it. Though she choked, it wasn't enough to detract from his frenzied thrusts into her, his hands on her hips and the pleasure rolling through her. She came, shrieking and sputtering in the puddle beneath her.

"Almost," Arthur gasped, moving erratically as she slowed down. Ariadne turned her face to look back toward him over her shoulder, and all he could see were smoldering eyes within a bloodied face, hair hanging down in thick clots.

He shuddered and came, fingers digging almost painfully into her hip bones. He watched her struggle back up to her elbows, and he slid his hands across her back. He painted her spine with blood, and helped turn her onto her back.

"You're a mess," Ariadne murmured, looking up at him. There was concern in her gaze as she touched his abdomen, confirming that everything was back where it belonged.

"You've fixed me," he told her quietly, curling up beside her on the sticky floor. The blood was drying, turning tacky beneath them. "You can clean it all up and make it better."

"Is there a better?" she asked, lips trembling.

"You make everything better," he told her softly. He stroked her face, watching as the blood slowly disappeared from their bodies. "There. All gone."

"How can I do this?" she asked, eyes sliding away from his. "You asked me to cut you open, put you back together... And then we had sex, like it was what should happen."

 _Because it should,_ he almost wanted to say. But she wasn't ready to hear that just yet. Maybe soon, but not now.

"I'm asking you to see me like that so you know how to fix me. I'm asking you to learn how to battle projections on their terms." He cupped her face in her hands. "I'm not asking you not to feel. I'm not asking you to be anyone other than who you are."

"It bothers me," she said quietly, sitting up and shrugging off his touch. "It bothers me to see you hurt like that. It bothers me that I'm the one that did it."

Arthur touched her shoulder, concerned. Her voice was so small and helpless, and she was curling in on herself in a way she never did in the waking world. "Ariadne? Talk to me. Why? Why does it bother you so much? What is it?"

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "Because I know it's going to happen again. Because I know I can do this again, and you will, and you'll make me, but it won't even be that hard. And I don't want it to be easy. I don't want it to be easy to hurt you, but it is."

He didn't smile or crow with triumph. He simply held her and looked at her solemnly. "This is part of the dream world, Ariadne. All the dark impulses are here. It's safe here. This is a safe place to deal with it. A safe place to purge them, to train, to get control over them. I would never even offer myself up to you if I didn't trust you. I trust you with everything, Ariadne. My life, my home, my mind, everything."

Ariadne looked at him almost piteously. "Why don't you hate me for this? You said cut you, not _gut_ you. I went completely overboard."

Arthur slid his hands down her body. They were clean now, all the blood gone. He could tell that she still saw it, was still disturbed by it on some level. _I can do this again,_ she had said. She knew how easy this was, how wonderful it could be. She just had to let go of those last little doubts and give herself over to him completely.

"You did exactly as I asked you to," he assured her. "You did nothing wrong, Ariadne. If it makes you feel any better, then use my projections. It won't be me, not in the sense that bothers you. I want you to feel successful. I want you to feel accomplished, that you can handle yourself no matter what happens in a dream." He pressed his lips to her temple. "You are amazing, Ariadne. I wish you could see what I see."

She looked at him with a troubled gaze. "What do you see?"

"You're beautiful, inside and out." He cupped her face in his hands. "You're loyal and fearless, an explorer and a hard worker. You _make_ things work. You create and build and love in equal measure. I get all of you, not just pieces of you, not just the bits you're willing to share." He smiled softly. "We're the same, Ariadne. Maybe that's why this works so well. Maybe all along I've been waiting for you."

Ariadne's eyes welled up with tears and she kissed him fiercely. "How can you love me? Why don't you think I'm awful? Why don't you hate me for this?" she asked, sliding her fingers through his hair, mussing it up.

He kissed her tenderly, then covered her face with kisses. "You're perfect, Ariadne. I don't hate you. I don't. I could never. This is _hard,_ I know. I don't pretend that it's easy, and I would never insult your intelligence to say that it is. It's hard doing this, being the best. Pushing yourself to break all these barriers..."

"You must have been so lonely," she murmured, curling around him and pressing her face into the crook of his neck.

"I was," he said simply. "And then I met you."

She sobbed, clinging to him. Her tears were scalding, but he relished the sensation. This was the last of her perceived innocence being washed away. She was being forged anew, and she would be stunning.

He couldn't wait to see how else she would surprise him.

***  
***


	4. No Peace To Be Found

"A" has responded even better than I had thought she would. There was a single instance in the dreaming where she refused to follow through on the session, claiming it was too upsetting to torture a projection. The projection in question looked too much like one of her foster fathers, which should have helped smooth the way for the session. Apparently she still had lingering affection for the man; leaving her alone in the dream to deal with the screaming and bleeding out seemed to chasten her sufficiently.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #8

 

Eames was looking forward to working with Ariadne again. She hadn't minded any of his ribald jokes, and had such joy in the work. It was nice to see that in the world; he felt he was too jaded by the choices he had made. Needling Arthur was always fun for a laugh or two, as was seeing him subject to Yusuf's experiments on occasion. He was wound too tight, too serious for this line of work. It was going to get him killed at some point, Eames was sure. He taunted him for having no imagination, but Eames knew better. Arthur had nothing but imagination, and it was always turning toward darker, filthy corners of the trade. He had to plan for every possible outcome, and they were always bloody and nasty. It was part and parcel of being the point man, but it was bound to make him snap at some point.

Perhaps that was what the lovely Ariadne saw in him. Perhaps she was the light to his darkness, the one to bring balance to his force. Or something like that.

Serge had been only too happy to dump Clive and go with Arthur when the offer came. He hadn't been able to find Arthur's contact numbers; the point man had dropped off the face of the earth after the Fischer job, and no one had been able to find him. Eames had worked with him long enough to know which numbers never changed. And if he hadn't been able to find Arthur, he would have gone to Cobb to track him down.

"Arthur! Ariadne!" Eames drawled, genuinely pleased to see them. Serge was working out of a lush office complex in Monaco. Eames was dressed in a crisp linen suit with an orange shirt that was open at the collar. Serge never pushed a formal dress code, and Eames was happy about that. He could pull it off, of course, but where was the fun in that?

Arthur as usual was in dress pants and a matching waistcoat over a dark colored shirt and a tie that was just slightly askew at the collar. His hair was slicked back, and the messenger bag at his shoulder pulled his jacket away from his neck. Eames had no idea why he bothered with the suit jacket in _Monaco,_ but Serge looked suitably impressed. It was probably why he did it, the smug bastard. Everyone was always so impressed with Arthur on sight. Then when he pulled out his impeccable memory and his knowledge of databases, network mainframes, security protocols and a contact list longer than he was tall, and the underground practically salivated. Eames wasn't bitter. Much.

Ariadne was a delight in her denims and layers of brightly colored clothing. In that respect, she looked exactly the same. She'd gotten a haircut since the Fischer job, just a bit of a trim. It was more flattering to her face now, allowing Eames an uncluttered view of her eyes. _Those_ were different, very different. It had only been a handful of months, but she seemed so much older now. Knowledge weighed heavy in those eyes in a way that Eames couldn't explain, and he wasn't sure he was entirely comfortable with it. She moved fluidly, much more graceful than he remembered her being. Gone was the awkward student looking to prove herself in the big leagues with all of the nasty men she found herself surrounded by. There was more confidence in her step. She was brilliant and she _knew it,_ and she knew she could kick ass and take names without breaking a sweat.

No wonder Arthur was so protective of her. She went from ethereal to gorgeous in a matter of three months, and Eames knew that the entire dreaming world would lie at her feet in no time.

She smiled warmly at him, while Arthur looked at him with his usual measure of irritation. "I missed you," she said, giving him a sweet hug. "I had a great time preparing for the Fischer job with all of you."

"Good, because I missed you, too," Eames said. "Are you sure you didn't miss me because I'm more fun to work with than this stick in the mud?" he teased.

Her laughter was delighted, and for a moment she seemed almost like the innocent she had been at the start of the Fischer job. She had started changing partway through it, and he had never been able to place what it was that had led to the change. Arthur likely knew; Arthur had always held her confidences, even then. Perhaps that was when the seeds of their romance began.

"Keep your hands to yourself," Arthur intoned, inclining his head only slightly toward him. "We're here for the job, remember?"

"Of course," Eames said in a solicitous tone. _Sotto voce,_ he added for Ariadne "And if this bloke ever does you wrong, you look me up, yeah?"

She shook her head and patted his arm fondly. "Oh, Eames."

The dismissal in her tone was only too clear, but that was part of the fun. Arthur's glower was terrible to behold, but there wasn't any bite behind it for now. Ariadne practically danced across the room and set up her workspace. Serge was beaming, telling Arthur about the job right away. Ariadne listened in, head cocked to the side to absorb it all. There was an intensity about her that Eames hadn't noted before, as if she had something to prove. No, he corrected after a moment's extra observation. It wasn't that she had something to prove to anyone. It was that the job mattered to her now in a way that the Fischer job hadn't, as if that job hadn't been quite real to her. Now she was in the business and she was trying to understand its inner workings.

It was eerie, how her expression almost seemed to mirror Arthur's look of intense concentration. He had heard of couples resembling each other after a time, but this was ridiculous.

The job itself was straightforward, and it would be a two layer job out of paranoia rather than necessity. Arthur and Eames would go in on the second level to extract the information needed, and Serge would hold the top level steady. Ariadne would keep watch over them as they slept, and then they would all disappear when the job was complete.

Eames didn't need to forge on this particular job. He was a straight extractor with Arthur as the point man. Honestly, he was glad to be working with Arthur and not Clive; Clive couldn't take a joke nearly as well as Arthur did. Eames hovered over Ariadne's workspace as she opened her laptop to begin rendering the basic sketches she had started making during Serge's overview. It had set her to thinking, and Eames was impressed with her sketches. Rough drafts though they were, there was a simple elegance about them.

"How have you been keeping yourself, Ariadne?" he asked, no teasing lilt to his tone.

"I've been training," she said with a careless shrug. "I got my degree just to finish it, but that didn't seem to be as important as making sure I'd be a useful part of the team, you know."

"I'd always thought you useful. You did a smashing job with Fischer."

She smiled her thanks, a faint pleased flush across her cheeks. "I want to make sure that fluke gets repeated over again, you know?" Her eyes were clear and friendly, and for a moment Eames thought he had imagined the rough intensity he had seen earlier. "How different it all could have gone if I had more training, don't you think?"

"Ariadne, that way lies madness. Trust me. It's only too easy to beat yourself up over that kind of thing," he said, voice dropping all semblance of casual mockery. He supposed he was glad Arthur had left to start his work, or he would have thought Eames was harassing her. "I don't want to see you swallowed up by regrets."

Her expression softened a fraction. "I don't regret anything, Eames. Don't misunderstand it. I mean, if I could have been factored into the planning from the start, instead of tacked on at the end because I didn't think Cobb could hack it."

Eames sat back. "Oh." He hadn't thought she was _that_ self-possessed back then. He had thought it was all bluster and fronts, not actual belief she would make a difference. It was a slight mistake, but not one he made often. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"I have," she said plainly.

Somewhat taken aback, Eames eyed Ariadne speculatively. "You're going to take this world by storm, darling," he murmured appreciatively.

Her smile was more of a smirk. "I do hope so. Otherwise, all this hard work I'm doing would be for nothing."

He laughed outright. "Can't have that."

"Of course not." She grinned at him. "You're worried about me."

"Well..." He shrugged sheepishly. "I'm fond of you. Not in a way to get Arthur's knickers in a twist, though it's always fun to watch him turn puce."

"Oh, be nice," Ariadne admonished with a laugh.

"I consider you a good friend, and I haven't got many of those in the business. It was good working with you on the Fischer job. I missed that. That doesn't happen often, you know. It's always nice to have a few folks I can work with safely and not worry about a knife in the back."

Ariadne's smile was brilliant, and she squeezed his hand gently. "I feel the same way. I'm glad you asked to have us work together. I missed that, too."

"Well, I'll let you work. Need anything? I was going to nip out for coffee."

Her eyes sparkled. "Light and sweet for me, please."

"I remember the regrettable caffeine addiction," Eames teased. He strolled over to Serge, who was writing a particularly filthy e-mail to his ex-wife. "Coffee?"

"Black," Serge said, not even looking up. "And for god's sake, stop hitting on the idiot barista, will you? She made some kind of fancy shit the last time you got coffee."

"That was Venice, Serge," Eames reminded him with a grin. "No flirting yet here in Monaco."

"Keep it that way," Serge replied, still not looking up.

Well, that just took all the fun out of the coffee run. Sulkily, he left the office space to run his errand. He returned at the same time as Arthur, who seemed as unflappable as always. "I didn't get you anything," he offered cheekily.

Arthur simply rolled his eyes at Eames and held the door open for him as they reentered the suite that Serge had rented. "Do you ever stop with the double entendres?" he asked, annoyed.

"How was that even a single entendre?" Eames asked, eyebrow raised. He trotted after Arthur's snort. "What? Honestly, my mind is not as dirty as yours if that was a double entendre."

"Do you ever shut up?"

"When the occasion warrants it," Eames replied. He distributed the coffees, and deliberately lingered too long by Ariadne's workspace just to ruffle Arthur's feathers. He was so laughably overprotective; Ariadne clearly didn't need him hovering over her at all times, and she could care for herself. When Arthur bristled and headed over to her space, Eames let his hand fall to her shoulder as he leaned over to look at her design. "That, my darling dear," he said with a flirty smirk, "is a thing of beauty."

"Of course it is," she replied sweetly. "I designed it."

Eames laughed, unable to help himself, and Arthur in all of his possessive glory descended upon Ariadne's workspace. She looked up at Arthur, unperturbed in the slightest. She rested her hand over his, fingers curling under his wrist. Her nails ran lightly over the sensitive skin there, and her expression must have said more than words ever could, because Arthur instantly seemed to settle. It was amazing to see, and Eames never thought it was possible.

"You've tamed the beast that is Arthur," Eames remarked in amazement when Arthur retreated to his own corner of the office.

"You shouldn't tease him so much," she told him severely.

"It's part of the fun to be had before a job."

"Ever think that maybe that's why other people can't stand you?" she asked, her tone just a shade too biting for Eames' liking. "I can take a joke, but architecture students can rip each other to shreds for fun. Not everyone likes that."

Eames dropped down into a seat beside her. "He's a possessive, overbearing man that believes his own hype. It's something of a hobby to try to poke a hole in it."

"I'd rather you didn't," Ariadne said, voice gentling. "There's a lot more there, things you'll never see. He'd never let you, and it would wound him to even think that you'd guess there might be depths to him. But there are. And I would really appreciate it if you cut back on those kinds of things. Please?"

"You play dirty pool," he murmured, shaking his head at the pleading expression on her cute little face.

"So you'll leave him alone?"

Eames blew out a breath. "Yes, fine. You see how much I like you?"

She grinned, blindingly bright. "Thank you."

"Is that it? You've got him wrapped around your pretty little fingers because of that smile?"

"Oh, no," she said sweetly, looking so very innocent for a moment. "It's because of all the amazing sex we have on every available horizontal and vertical surface of our apartment."

Eames sputtered at the visual, making her laugh merrily. Really, he asked for that one. "I'm going to get no peace at all if I don't leave off the jokes, is that it?"

"Oh, yes," she said, still laughing. "Want me to extoll his virtues in bed?"

"I think I'm going to be ill," he replied, waving her off.

She laughed and shook her head at him. "Then stop baiting him."

"Oh, fine. But you know if he only replied once in a while..."

"Not his style, Eames."

He sighed. "I keep waiting to see what it'll take until he finally loses his cool. Everyone has a breaking point."

"You just can't help yourself, can you?"

Eames shrugged. "It's a hobby."

Ariadne patted his arm. "Do it elsewhere, then? Because I really don't want to mop up bits of you off of the ceiling."

He lofted an eyebrow at Ariadne in surprise. "He wouldn't."

Her smile was beatific. "It's amazing to watch him do it. Really. Almost like dancing. I could show you sometime. I'm almost as good as he is."

The maddening and almost horrific part of it was that she wasn't lying. He might not have known all of her tells, but everything in Eames told him that she wasn't lying about this. There was a part of Arthur capable of violence of such magnitude, and there was a part of both of them capable of finding it beautiful.

No wonder they fit together. They were exactly the same.

***

The job itself was fairly straightforward, and the designs were fantastic. Serge was singing Ariadne's praises, and he hadn't seen her designs outside of the trial runs. She was very calm about it, assuming the role of a teacher during those sessions. Serge memorized his map easily, and he absolutely adored the level that she built. Eames was the dreamer for the second level; as point, Arthur had a higher chance of getting killed if their subject ever got wise to the theft.

Eames at least could forge as a last resort, so he was likely to get the information they needed without compromising the level. It had been Arthur's idea to have him be the dreamer. While the two had an odd sort of working relationship, they both knew they could get the job done.

On the second level, there was an odd sort of calm that settled over both men. _Showtime,_ Eames thought, watching the projections move about the dream city. He looked over at Arthur, who had materialized only a few feet away from him. "Ready to play?" he asked.

"This isn't a game," Arthur replied crisply. He shook out his immaculate suit and looked over at Eames' with a slightly amused smile. "You should wear that in reality more often."

He didn't have to look down at himself to know that Arthur was referring to the bespoke pinstripe suit he was wearing. "I do know how to dress, darling. But why ruin a five thousand dollar suit if I'm shot?"

"People would take you more seriously if you did," he pointed out.

"Honestly, I don't care what people think about how I dress," he drawled. He started walking toward the office building where the subject was going to be. "So... You and Ariadne." He could see the tension in Arthur's expression out of the corner of his eye. He had very few tells, but that was one of them. "She's taken on some of your bad habits, I think."

"Oh?"

"She's a little more stuffy than I remember. It wasn't even that long ago where she was cracking more jokes and wanting to go out for coffee or dinner to talk shop. Now she just disappears to whatever hole the two of you are hiding in." He looked over at Arthur in concern. "It's not healthy, you know. It smacks of codependency. Or control."

There was a muted spark of anger in Arthur's eyes before he suppressed it. Eames wondered what it would take to get that spark to grow into a full flame. "Let it go, Mr. Eames."

Eames ignored the warning in his tone. "She's a friend, Arthur, nothing more. But you... You get focused on something, and it's like a terrier with a bone. Once you fixate, nothing can shake you. I've never seen you in a relationship, but it can't be healthy for either of you."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Arthur replied coolly, brushing past Eames. "We have a job to do."

"It can keep a minute," Eames said, catching hold of his arm. "Something feels off about the whole thing with you two. What are you playing at with her, Arthur?"

"My relationship is none of your business, Eames," Arthur intoned, eyes flashing. He yanked his arm out of Eames' loose grip. "We're here on a job, nothing more."

"I don't like this side of you," Eames said flatly. "It was one thing when you tried to put a leash on Cobb. He needed it. Ariadne doesn't."

Arthur shoved Eames in the chest. The move seemed to come out of nowhere, and Eames had to readjust his footing to keep from falling onto the pavement. "Where do you get off lecturing _me_ on proper behavior?"

"Because it all went south on me once," Eames admitted, shrugging. "She was in the business, too. I tried to get protective, all that same stuff I see you doing. She didn't appreciate it and left, and took one dangerous job after another just to prove to me she could hack it on her own."

Something in Arthur's expression softened; Eames had never told him this before, and he doubted it would show up on any background check the point man would have done on him. It was the truth, however, and only part of the reason he felt a little protective of Ariadne. She reminded him of his sister in a few ways. It wasn't the appearance, exactly. It was more of the exuberance that she had brought with her to the preparation for the Fischer job, as well as the determination to see it to completion when it fell apart on the third level.

"What happened to her, Eames?" Arthur prompted when Eames fell silent.

"She's dead," Eames said shortly. He didn't like thinking about it, and was starting to regret bringing it up. "Ariadne's a friend, Arthur. I wouldn't say anything if I wasn't worried about her."

"That won't happen. You're not the only one thinking to give me advice."

"Cobb?" Eames guessed. Yusuf wasn't the type to involve himself in others' business.

Arthur nodded sharply. "Cobb."

"I'm not telling you what to do, exactly. But you can't hold on too tight. You might strangle her otherwise. She's talented, Arthur."

"I know. I've been helping her develop that."

Eames blew out a breath. Arthur didn't seem to hear a word he had just said. "You need to give her room to develop on her own, too. She needs her own perspective."

Arthur nodded and turned back toward the building they needed to enter. "I respect her abilities, Eames, don't worry about that. I'm not looking to control her."

"You're not? It sure looks that way from the outside."

"I want a _partner,_ Eames. Someone to share in the business. It means teaching her how it works so she can stand on her own two feet in the thick of it."

Arthur's eyes were clear, and there was no tension in his body. It was probably as close to the truth as Arthur knew how to tell it, so Eames had to accept it. He nodded slowly. "All right. I just wanted to say that before this job got underway. I might not get another chance, you know?"

"Plus if it's in a dream, Ariadne can't hear you and kick your ass."

Eames laughed at Arthur's wry tone. Whatever this odd interlude was, they were back on their usual footing. "Too right. I'm not an idiot, Arthur."

"I wouldn't work with you if you were," he acknowledged. "Now are we ready to go?"

They fell into step walking into the building, and it was pretty much like all the other times they had worked together. It was comfortable, and Eames was glad of that. If it came down to a fair fight, the two men were probably evenly matched. If it came down to an _unfair_ fight, it all depended on where it went down. In the real world, Eames had sheer muscle mass on his side. Arthur had a lithe runner's build, which sometimes helped others underestimate his fighting skills. Both were familiar with dirty tactics, but Eames had a feeling that Arthur wouldn't think twice about doing grievous harm to someone else just to win. He often moved with efficient gestures, and some of his choices in a job were a question of expediency. He would do whatever it took to succeed, no matter the cost.

It made him an excellent point man and extractor. It made him a chilling coworker. Eames didn't even want to think about what kind of lover it made him.

***

When they all woke from the job, the first thing Eames thought was that it had all gone off without a hitch. His second thought was that he smelled blood. He rolled from his prone position on the floor of the subject's bedroom and saw Arthur and Serge also waking and moving to alert positions. Arthur even had his Glock out.

Ariadne was cleaning up a bloody pool on the floor. There was a slight tremor in her hands, but otherwise she seemed all right. There was a body in the tub, feet hanging over the edge of the porcelain, a bloody trail leading from the bedroom.

Arthur's eyes were sharp as he looked at Ariadne, but he didn't say anything immediately. Serge looked around in horror. _"Mon Dieu!"_ he cried. "What happened?"

"His girlfriend came in. She and I disagreed about what should happen to the rest of you," Ariadne said, putting down the towel she had been scrubbing the floor with. She looked up at them, her eyes large in her pale face. "I won the argument."

Eames could only stare. Whatever tremor there was in her hands didn't reach her voice. She looked as poised as ever, and her understatement was doing more to soothe Serge than anything else she could have done.

His worry had been for nothing. Ariadne was more than capable of handling herself. She was probably even more capable than his ex had been before she broke things off.

"Staging a suicide, then?" he asked quietly. She nodded. "Well, she was always a little drama queen, that one. Let's get this sorted."

Their subject had liked hardwood floors and clean lines, and the floors had been freshly waxed the day of their arrival. The blood hadn't even been allowed to dry before Ariadne started mopping it up, keeping the number of towels to a minimum so that the subject wouldn't realize that they missing. The cuts on the girlfriend had been efficient and deadly. There was a deep stab to the gut, a few shallow cuts on the arms that probably were defensive wounds, as well as some deeper cuts along both wrists that Ariadne had made sure looked like they were self-inflicted. The water was turned on in the tub, allowing more blood to wash out of the wounds and provide an explanation for why there was less blood in the tub than there should have been.

Ariadne was scarily efficient, and never once leaned on Arthur for his advice in staging the girlfriend's body. He looked on and followed her directions, as a matter of fact, though there seemed to be a faint sense of pride in his stance as he moved.

When they were all safe, Eames approached the pair of them at a café. "I was wrong earlier," he said without preamble, looking at Arthur. "It appears my worry was misplaced."

Arthur nodded at the backward apology, though Ariadne was confused. "What are you talking about, Eames?"

"I thought Arthur was being overprotective of you. Like you're some kind of possession that only he can hang onto." Eames shrugged and sipped at his coffee. "I might have had a few words with our Arthur on the subject. I worry about the people I care about," he offered at Ariadne's surprised expression.

She reached across the table to touch his hand gently. "You don't have to worry about me, Eames, really you don't. I'm fine."

"I see that now." He smiled at her ruefully. "I can't help it, though. You're a friend and this is your second job. I wanted to make sure you'd be all right."

Ariadne's smile was the same fond one she usually had for him. He rather thought it was the kind of smile people had for older brothers. "I'm flattered you care that much."

"Don't tell anyone," he teased. "It would ruin my heartless reputation."

"Isn't that _my_ reputation?" Arthur asked, sounding almost amused. He seemed much more relaxed than Eames had seen him in years. Then again, being on the run with Cobb was likely the cause of that. Now he was on his own in the dream scene, he had Ariadne in his bed on a regular basis, and their current job had just ended well. Life was good for Arthur, and some of that relentless determination seemed to scale back a bit. Eames wouldn't have thought him capable of it if he hadn't seen it for himself.

"You're a _machine,_ Arthur. I'm the bastard that cuts and runs when it goes south."

"Because you do," Arthur pointed out.

"Because I take the improbable jobs no one else wants, no matter the risk. And generally that means I work with even bigger bastards than I am." Eames shrugged. "Maybe someday that will change, but not bloody likely. What about you two?"

Ariadne shrugged. "I haven't decided what kind of jobs I want to try to specialize in yet."

"I don't have a specialty," Arthur told her.

"Then I guess I won't, either." She grinned. "I suppose architects generally don't, but still. Who says I have to be just an architect?"

"Somehow, Ariadne, I don't think you're _just_ anything," Eames drawled.

"Precisely," she said, eyes sparkling with mischief.

Eames wouldn't have to worry about Ariadne at all. She could definitely take care of herself. And she was likely a match for whatever Arthur could do, too.

***  
***


	5. Testing Out New Limits

Love is a petty illusion, but apparently it's one that she needs to have. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it's not love that would bind two people tightly together. It's need and devotion and usefulness; love is petty and pathetic, driving lesser creatures to madness. I would have thought "A" is above such things. I may need to offer her a token show in the short term to establish the more important lessons first. The need for the idiotic words will have to be stamped out at a later date.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #8

 

"You were _amazing,"_ Arthur said, mouth crashing down over Ariadne's. She was taking off his clothes at a frantic pace, and her kiss was as possessive as his.

God, she was _perfect._

"Is this where you say 'I told you so?'" she asked, moving to kiss his jaw. "Because it's really annoying when you gloat."

"Not planning to," he said, moving to kiss her neck and push her blouse from her shoulders. "I'm just glad it came in handy."

"Huh. Sounds like an 'I told you so' to me," she teased, taking his earlobe between her teeth.

"Then fine, I told you the training would come in handy." Arthur slid his fingers down her back to undo her bra strap. "You saved our lives, Ariadne."

"I couldn't let her kill you. Or the others."

He didn't miss the fact that she put his life first. "Do you know how hot it is, knowing that you could do that?" he asked, pulling her bra off. He mouthed a breast, making her gasp and hold onto the back of his head. "I've seen you move in dreams," he said, mouth at the hollow between her breasts. "It's like everything you do is magic."

These were principles of conditioning. Positive reinforcement and reward for successfully molded behavior. Arthur knew that on an intellectual level. Aside from that, he wanted to feel Ariadne's skin against his, wanted to feel her fingers pulling at his flesh, wanted to feel her clamp down around his cock as she came. He wanted her, inside and out.

She rode him hard and fast, not bothering with much foreplay. Once he was spent, she slowed down and pressed kisses into his skin, letting her hands linger along the planes of his body. "I'd do anything to keep you safe," she said. There was that faint edge of possession in her voice that Eames had heard in his. It was almost unsettling to hear it from her. He hadn't thought he would hear it there, but it made sense.

They had been together for only a few months in the waking world, but all of their trips into the dreaming for training had amplified their relationship. It wasn't the codependency that Eames had feared it would be, not really. He was her teacher when it came to the dream share world, but like any good student she was able to survive on her own. She could extrapolate from the data that Arthur had presented her with, and she was able to figure out a practical application. Ariadne was like a force of nature now, a woman that complimented him in every way. With this job, he had let her go and trusted that she would be able to handle it. And she had, spectacularly, with a calm and brutal efficiency that he could be proud of.

"Just like I'd do anything for you," Arthur said quietly, running his fingers lightly across her back. He could feel the power thrumming through her. She could create things, and she could also _recreate_ things.

Ariadne licked a trail down his chest and smiled up at him. "I _was_ amazing, wasn't I?"

The Ariadne that had come to Paris never would have been able to acknowledge her own prowess this way. She would have been reticent about her skills, even if she was proud of them and sure she could succeed. She would have pushed to be included, but would have backed off if she was told no. This Ariadne would back down to no one.

Arthur grinned at her and pulled her up so that he could kiss her mouth. "Very amazing." He turned her onto her back. "Shall I show you how much I appreciate that amazing?"

She grinned happily at him. "Yes, please."

He stretched out over her, eyes dark with lust. He kissed her hungrily, then moved slowly down her neck to the valley between her breasts. He licked a stripe down her abdomen, then dipped his tongue into her navel. She giggled, twisting slightly at the ticklish sensation, but he held her hips steady so that he could kiss his way further south. "Oh, yes," she said, voice fracturing slightly. "I like it when you do that."

"That's why I do it," he said, grinning at the appreciative tone of voice she had. Before she could say anything else, he nudged her thighs apart and brought his lips to the hidden folds. He licked them, tracing the edges of flesh before moving a hand to spread them apart. Ariadne sucked in a breath as he licked her clit. It was soft at first, then a little rougher. She moaned and tried to shift her hips up, but he kept her still. He didn't want complete access just yet. He liked teasing her, liked hearing her breath come in quick little pants. There was only so much she could take before she started begging him to hurry the hell up and let her come, and her rough voice sent shivers down his spine when she did that.

"Don't stop," she panted, grasping the pillow beneath her head with one hand and running the other through his hair. "Please, Arthur, now, more..."

He spread her folds farther apart then closed his lips around her clit and tugged gently. She made a soft keening noise, her hips bucking beneath his mouth. "You know, if you don't hold steady, I can't hit the same spot," he admonished playfully.

"Just fucking make me come," she growled, nails scratching at his scalp. There was a delicious shiver down his spine, and he moved to comply instantly. She let out a sigh of pleasure and let her legs fall wide. Arthur moved into the space, nudging them farther apart to give more room for his shoulders. He set his mouth over her, tongue delving deep enough to make her cry out and arch up. It wasn't enough to make her come, not by a long shot, but enough to make it difficult for her to form coherent sentences.

"Please," she panted, shaking beneath him. "Arthur, please, there, right there, like that, oh yes, like that, right there..."

She shattered with a cry, trembling. Arthur pressed the flat of his tongue against her clit until the tremors passed and her breathing started to slow. He then gave a slow lick, making her gasp and pull at his hair. "I take it you like that," he laughed, pressing his face against the top of her thigh when she pulled him up and away from her mons.

"Yes, but I want you inside me."

"Oh, is that all?" he teased, a smile cracking his face. It was less for effect and more for genuine pleasure with her. She was _perfect,_ and it had all gone so well on this job. He was only too happy to drive deeply into her, making her gasp at the sensation. He rocked against her, slowly at first, ignoring the insistent press of her hands on his thighs pulling him closer. He grinned at her frustrated noises and attempts to shift her hips up to meet him. "Someone's eager," he commented.

"Shut up and move," she panted, trying to push her heels into his ass. He resisted, drawing back until he almost fell out of her. "Harder, Arthur. Come on."

Arthur laughed and then slammed back into her, hard enough that she would see stars. Ariadne let out a groan of pleasure, arms falling to caress his thighs. He moved hard and fast, just the way she liked it, until she was clenching down tightly around him, writhing and moaning obscenely as she approached orgasm. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from coming just yet, but he couldn't help it as she got even closer. He came, and rubbed at her clit to tip her over the edge as well. She cried out sharply, nails raking a path along his thighs.

"Ow," he teased, shifting his weight onto his hands on either side of her head.

"Sorry," she replied, not looking sorry at all. "Didn't mean to."

"You _like_ hurting me," he taunted.

"I do not!" she said, not quite outraged. She was too sated to truly rise to the occasion, and she pulled a face at him. "You're making fun of me."

He lowered himself just enough to kiss the tip of her nose. "Maybe just a little," he admitted with a smile. "You get this gorgeous flush when you're angry."

"Just for that, I _should_ hurt you," Ariadne huffed.

"Promise?" Arthur asked, voice low and seductive.

She blinked in surprise. "Seriously?"

"Maybe. Probably." He grinned at her, dimples winking. "Maybe more than probably."

Ariadne couldn't help but laugh in response to that. "I don't even know what to make of you sometimes, Arthur. You constantly challenge me."

"That's a good thing, right?" he asked, sure of her answer.

"Always," she replied, grinning up at him. She pulled him down for a lusty kiss, then looked into his eyes. "I suppose you meant to do it in the PASIV and not in real life?"

There was just the faintest edge of concern in her tone. It was touching, if unnecessary. "I might've tried a few of the harder kinks before," he said, shrugging. "The real draw is if you do it with someone you trust. Someone you have absolute faith in."

"Someone you love," Ariadne murmured, running her fingers across his face.

He drew her fingers into his mouth rather than answer. He didn't believe in love. It was too weak an emotion, and what he felt was too raw and complicated for that. He let her believe this was love. She needed to feel that, needed to put a name to what their bond was. There was respect and absolute trust, and it was a partnership unlike any he had ever had before. That was the most important part to him. His machinations all served to bring them to this point, and he didn't have to do anything anymore.

"Would you?" he asked, running the tip of his tongue along the pad of her forefinger.

"In a dream," she said in a quiet tone. "I wouldn't want to cross the line and really hurt you in real life," she clarified after a moment. "I haven't done any of that before, and I wouldn't want to screw it up."

"In a dream," Arthur began, "you can take it a lot farther. Things can get out of hand really quickly, and it would be nothing like real life."

"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, only the slightest of tremors in her voice.

Arthur grinned, eyes crinkling. "Define bad."

She snickered, and he sucked on a fingertip in reply. "You like specificity that much?" she teased, her voice a little breathy.

"Sure. But if it's a dream, is it really that bad? Is it really something to be scared of? It's not permanent, not in the flesh anyway. We'd remember. We'd know what happened, and we would learn what worked for us."

"Not peeling back your skin," Ariadne said quickly, wrinkling her nose. "That's just gross. And don't say it's fine because my stitches are good. It's still gross."

He couldn't help but laugh. "You seemed to do okay on my projections."

"Yes, and it's weird that they let me. I know you said you suppressed them," she added quickly when he opened his mouth. "But still. Weird. And gross. Don't forget gross."

"All right. I don't particularly enjoy that one anyway."

"I think anything from Hellraiser is off the table," Ariadne said, moving her hand to run down the length of his neck. "And honestly, most of those painful things don't do it for me at all."

"Even inflicting it?" he asked, eyebrow arched. Once she had gotten into a rhythm with the projections, she had gotten really good at inflicting damage. Not all of the projections had been his. Some of her more vicious attacks had been to some of her own, and Arthur guessed that they reminded her of some of her foster families.

"You said that didn't make me sadistic," she reminded him.

"You would never do it in the real world." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Too messy and too easy to get caught, anyway. The point is to do what needs to be done and that's it." He moved to kiss her nose. "Make order out of chaos." He kissed her mouth lightly. "Reshape things and bend the world to your will."

"That's why we work in dreams, isn't it?" she asked, pulling his head down to kiss him. "That's why we have each other?"

Arthur kissed her deeply. "That's exactly why we have each other. You understand me like no one else ever has before. You get it."

Ariadne gave him a wry smile. "Maybe because I need it, too."

It was more than he could have dreamed to hear from her lips, even more so because it was true.

***

It was a busy hotel, with people running around. It reminded Ariadne of New York, with its constant hustle and bustle, the teeming anonymity of the place and the rapid pace everyone moved around with. She looked over at Arthur, amused. "Your mind is a busy, busy place," she said with a fond smile. "Usually it's so much calmer."

"Anticipation, I think," he said, eyes crinkling as he smiled. He slid his hand down the small of her back and watched her smile soften into that sensual one she kept just for him. "Shall we?"

She nodded. "Let's start this."

It was easy enough to find their room. Ariadne was in a tight overbust corset and black slacks, a jacket covering her shoulders. Arthur knew that it kept her from feeling too overly exposed. He was in jeans and a T shirt, which had surprised her at first. He had merely grinned at her; he knew he looked as though he was wrapped too tight the rest of the time, but they were about to cut loose and really experiment, testing each other's limits. It was a dream, but he wanted to make this easier for her. She would feel bad about ripping apart a bespoke suit, even if it was just a dream one.

Ariadne tossed the jacket aside, exposing her shoulders and the rise of her breasts. Arthur couldn't help but look, and her smirk wasn't annoying in the least. "Get on the bed, Arthur," she said, smirk deepening a bit more.

"I thought you'd want me naked for this?"

She removed a long, thin blade from her jacket pocket. "Do I need to discipline you already?"

He had a soft hum of appreciation. "Maybe?"

She flicked her wrist, and the blade whipped across the distance between them. It sliced through the T shirt and bit deeply into his collarbone. Arthur sucked in a breath as the sting hit after a second. It was a clean cut, nothing dangerous yet, and crimson spilled down the front of his shirt in a wave. Oh. He would have to revise that thought. She must have nicked the subclavian artery as well as hit the bone.

In a flash, Arthur could feel another slice as the blade bit along his torso. It was a dream blade, slicing cleanly through skin and muscle and digging down deep to the bone. The blade dragged across a rib, and he felt it keenly. He looked at Ariadne, adoration and respect and _need_ in his eyes. She was looking so satisfied with herself, so in control and determined that he would bend to _her_ wishes for this little game. She never would have been able to do that during the Fischer job. She never would have challenged him this openly.

God, she was gorgeous and perfect. She was _lovely._

A wave of her hand, and the bleeding was gone. The artery was knitted back together, the flesh seamless once more. If this was a more dangerous kind of mind, a situation where the rules of a dream couldn't be changed, she would have probably pulled back a little farther so that his artery wouldn't have been nicked. It was too close to the aorta, too major an artery to leave bleeding for a long time. But the point was made, and Arthur was impressed.

He got on the bed, and the satisfied gleam in her eyes was worth it.

She impaled him on the bed with the same kind of blades she had whipped him with. They pierced his hands and wrists, then his ankles. "Comfy?" she asked, voice as edged as any blade.

"No," he ground out, feeling the bite of each blade grinding against bone. Her voice, though, that lovely voice, was still enough to get him hardening.

"Too bad," she crooned, her pants disappearing. She was in a corset and black lace panties now, and grinding down over him. "This is all you get until you're comfortable."

He pulled his hands up, bearing the exquisite pain of it. She was inventive, he had to give her that. Mal had never thought of blades like this. Then again, she had also been a little ashamed of this part of her, as if she shouldn't get what she wanted. There was nothing wrong in making sure you got what you wanted, he told her a thousand times. It didn't matter what it took as long as you got it, and that was the way the world worked. It was the other person's fault if they didn't get out of the way in time.

He brought his bloodied hands and wrists to her face. She was grinning at him, still rubbing herself against his burgeoning erection. "That's against my rules," she told him, feeling him lift his ankles off of the blades.

"You never said there were rules."

Ariadne snorted. "There's always rules. You should've asked for specifics."

Arthur laughed and pulled her down to the bed, twisting so that she lay beneath him. She turned, trying to get out of the circle of his arms, and wound up pressed facedown onto the bed. He pushed himself deep inside her ass, making her squeak in surprise. "Oh, should I have gone somewhere else?" he taunted. "Maybe you should've been specific, too."

Her body blurred, and it reshaped itself so that she was facing him and his cock was buried deep inside her cunt instead. She ripped his shirt off of him, then raked her nails across his chest. "If you're going to fuck me, do it properly."

Laughing, Arthur did just that. He moved hard and fast, burying himself to the hilt and hitting the end of her cervix. Ariadne howled in pleasure, arching up and grabbing at him. She pulled him deep, rocking against him. "Harder," she groaned. "More."

It was a dream, so he could move faster and harder, pushing deeper with every thrust. Ariadne cried out, convulsing around his cock as she came. As delicious as she felt, he didn't come. He withdrew instead, making her cry out in disappointment. Arthur placed a collar around her neck and let a chain dangle down from the ceiling. She looked at him in challenge, and he attached the chain to her neck collar. She was dangled from the ceiling, just at the right height Arthur needed to slide into her. Ariadne had no leverage to really counter his thrusts, and all she could do was wrap her legs around his waist and cling to his shoulders for balance. When she was close to coming, Ariadne grasped the chain dangling down and pulled, lengthening it. She wrapped the chain around Arthur's neck, then pulled it tight as she came.

"Sneaky," Arthur rasped after he made the chain disappear.

"And you love me for it," she taunted.

He dropped her face first onto the bed and drove deep into her. She was slippery but still tight around him, still grasping at his cock greedily. "Yes, I do."

Arthur ran his fingers over the back of the corset, and it split wide open. He pushed it aside, then pressed his fingers along her spine. He could feel the ridges of bone there, knew he could pull out every last rib and she would let him. He looked at her when she turned to look at him over her shoulder. "What?"

"You're dawdling," she complained.

Arthur moved harder than before, making her cry out and arch her back. He watched the play of muscles beneath her skin, watched her throw back her hair. He grabbed it and pulled, forcing her to hyperextend her neck. Her fingers scrabbled across the bed, grasping and pulling at the sheets. There were still splashes of blood from before, and she didn't seem to care about them. Ariadne came, her whole body shaking. She reached behind her, a move she could never complete in the real world, and pulled hard.

Tumbling down to the bed, Arthur watched as Ariadne grinned wickedly at him. "You know what I want, Arthur?"

He couldn't describe the look in her eyes. The gaping emptiness he thought she couldn't see was mirrored back at him. There was an answering emptiness within her, a hole that could never be filled, no matter what awful things he did in dreams.

His ass was slicked and cold, and then her fingers slid inside. Without preparation, he was tight around her fingers. "I want to fuck you," she said, voice heavy with lust. Her small breasts bounced with the force of her thrusts into him. "I want to make you come so hard you can't see, that _you're_ the one boneless. I want you to admit you love me."

"Ariadne..."

"I know you think the words are stupid. _I_ don't think they are. And _I_ think you love me, but you're just too chickenshit to say so." She curled her fingers, hitting his prostate, and Arthur yelped at the shock of pleasure running through him. She worked him ruthlessly, bringing him high then stopping. Arthur tried to shift back, to push down onto her fingers, but she moved with him. He tried to rub his cock against her arm or twist so that he could rub it against the bed, but she didn't allow that either.

Arthur closed his eyes. His own technique used against him, and she was _good._ He was hanging on out of sheer stubbornness, his own conviction that what they had was more important than love. Love was a ploy. It was a Hallmark emotion. It wasn't the devotion and partnership that they had. He'd explained it, and she understood it.

"You know what I want to hear," she crooned, letting her index finger slide over the bump of his prostate. Arthur made a soft whimpering sound. "Is it so hard to say it?"

"You... You're my _partner._ In everything. That's better than love."

She let her tongue lick a spiral around the head of his weeping cock, and he moaned. "Is it?"

"Yes. Love fades. It warps. It turns ugly. I've _seen_ it, Ariadne," he gasped, writhing and trying to push his cock back toward her face. "This is better."

"You mean Mal and Dom," she said quietly, a measure of understanding slipping into her features. She didn't know the half of it, but Arthur would never tell her. Her features softened, and she curled her fingers in his ass as she closed her mouth down over his cock. He cried out, hips jerking as he came. She swallowed him down then withdrew her fingers. "You're right. We're better than that. But that doesn't mean this is any less love."

"Maybe. If you want to think so."

"I do."

Arthur threaded his fingers through hers. "Then maybe I could say it."

"Really?"

"But not now," he said, then grasped her hips and pulled her so that she was positioned over his face. "I want to taste you," he growled. "I want to fuck you with my mouth."

"Then shut up and do it," Ariadne said with a smile.

She came as the faint strains of Mozart broke though. Her eyes snapped open in their apartment and she turned to look at Arthur. He was already pulling out his lead and reaching for her. Ariadne let him pull her to her feet, his front pressed to her chest. His hand slipped beneath the edge of her jeans and found her wet. He was already hard and ready for her. "Some dream, hm?" she asked, shimmying her hips so that she ground against his erection.

Arthur growled and shed their clothes. He fucked her hard and fast, her body clenching down tight around him until he spilled into her. Arthur watched as she curled around him, her touch delicate even though there was still that darkness behind her eyes. She was like him, exactly like him. She wasn't shying away from the darkness, but embracing it.

He reached up and grasped her face possessively. "I love you," he said, voice clear.

Her smile was beatific, and worth the effort it had taken to wring the words out of his chest. "I know," she said, lowering herself on top of him. "I love you, too."

***  
***


	6. Unlocking Secrets

Her secrets aren't truly secrets, in the sense that I already know what she's hidden from herself. Seeing the reality of her situation will be important. She needs to see that her fears are childish and a poor foundation for the person that she should be. She is nothing like the base material from which she had come from. Against the odds, she had risen from that mire and made something bright and shining of herself. She has been startlingly easy to mold in that respect, completely impossible to break in others. Still, it is amazing to see how far she has come. I know I can bring her farther still; there are few things she will refuse me now.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #9

 

Ariadne spun her pen around in her fingers, chin in her other hand. She wasn't looking down at the sketch she was working on, or the model across from her. Her eyes were unfocused, and Arthur almost didn't want to disturb her. They were on a time limit, though, and he was trying to see if the two of them could go into a one level job without needing anyone else under with them. He knew Takeo would be able to watch over them, considering it an easy ten grand just to watch people sleep for an hour. Arthur tended to make sure that there was minimal risk regarding real world security, and Takeo liked that. He didn't like killing people if he didn't have to, and generally avoided high risk jobs.

Arthur finally approached, running his hands down her arms. "Lovely Ariadne, what's going on?" he asked, lips by her ear. She startled, and he chuckled. "Heavy thinking?"

"You think we can do this, just the two of us?"

"It's an easy job, Ariadne. I know you'll do well."

She ran the back of her pen along the line of his throat. "I suppose it's jitters."

"Can't afford to have them now," he reminded her. "You probably don't have to build me a model, but you'll still need to build it and teach me the layout."

She took a deep breath. "This would be my first extraction."

"It'll be fine. You extracted from me without difficulty."

"The name of your first girlfriend is hardly a state secret," Ariadne said, rolling her eyes. Arthur laughed and leaned in close to press his lips against the side of her neck. "Well, it's not. And I know we're not stealing state secrets, but still..."

"You're worried he'll be protected?"

"A little."

"Then fine. How about this... We'll go into your mind. You need to hide a secret from me. Any secret, but you've got to hide it. And you'll see what kind of measures you can take to keep it safe from me. That will give you an idea what to prepare for."

Ariadne smiled gratefully at him. "You always seem to know just how to get things going. What are you, psychic?"

He laughed again and kissed her head. "No, but I had the same exact fears when I started. You're a natural, Ariadne. You have done great with everything else I've thrown at you. So I'm pretty confident you'll be great at this, too."

Ariadne kissed his mouth tenderly. "Thanks, Arthur."

"It's true," he murmured before kissing her back. "Come on. An hour's practice should help clear your head, and you'll finish your design."

Going under was easy; Arthur wasn't concerned about all the puncture marks in their arms. It looked worse than it really was, and after a while they could start backing off on all the rigid practice they had been doing. It was hard to get her up to speed without using the PASIV so much, but at least she had taken to the lessons well.

Arthur recognized the landscape from Ariadne's incomplete sketches. He watched her build up the city around them, frowning at it and moving buildings around until it looked better. "There," she said after a few minutes in the dream. "This looks like it would work. He hates open spaces, and I had too much of it in the maze before," she said.

"Well, I guess this is where I try to break into your mind," he said, lips twisting into a wry grin.

"But I know this is a dream. Wouldn't that mean you're up against militarized projections?"

"I guess I'm throwing myself on your mercy," Arthur said, amused. He pulled a Glock from beneath his suit jacket. "And I have my Glock."

"Ugly, difficult gun," she teased. "You should get something prettier."

Arthur snorted. "This does the job, and it's reliable. It's easy to get. I don't need anything flashy or difficult." He pulled her flush against him. "Or did you just want to go under to fuck the tension out of you?"

Ariadne's laughter was light. The last of her nerves seemed to fall away. "No, but if you find my secrets, I'll reward you appropriately."

"Mmm. Good incentive, then."

He wandered through the city. The design was for the subject, but he could see the touches of Ariadne's personality all throughout the buildings. The maze was complicated, as he knew it would be, but he didn't need to get to the center. The center of the maze would be empty, and it wasn't where Ariadne would hide _her_ secrets.

There was a smaller house tucked away behind the skyscrapers blotting out the sun. Arthur made a beeline for it, and started encountering problems. First it was the topiary of the buildings getting snarled and large, not letting him see where he was going. Projections pushed past him; one even cut his arm and licked the blood off of the knife. That was new. When he had first started, her projections seemed unwilling to shed his blood. Arthur ignored the projections staring at him, their eyes dark and beady. He seemed to be entering horror movie territory, as the light was fading quickly as he approached the house. Ariadne was following behind him, wringing her hands and looking uneasy. Her projections were getting murderous as he came closer, and the very ground itself was starting to writhe and shake beneath his feet. This was more than what their subject would be able to do, but Arthur was able to move and stay upright. To his pleasure, Ariadne was able to step correctly as well, never losing her balance.

He hit an invisible wall, which was interesting. He hadn't really hit one of those before, though he had heard of them, of course. Most were mental force fields and not truly solid. Arthur worked to dissolve the substance of his physical body, trying to make himself more ghostlike. He would be able to pass through the field then. That also assumed it wasn't an actual invisible wall. It was Ariadne, after all. She was too good to fall into the common traps.

He was able to move partway through the invisible barrier before he was trapped. He wanted to laugh. Ariadne had tricked him with a force field _and_ a wall. Well, that was easy enough. He made himself float above the wall, and then coasted back to the ground. Once there, he made himself solid once again. Ariadne was stuck on the other side, her hands pressed anxiously against the invisible wall she had created. There was worry in her eyes; she probably didn't even know what was in the small house. There were any number of secrets in her past, and for this exercise, anything might count as a secret.

"Come with me," Arthur said, beckoning her to follow.

"I can't," she replied, leaning her forehead against the invisible wall. Her projections were milling about behind her, watching closely and waiting. "I can't go through."

"Ariadne, this is _your_ mind and _your_ dream. You're lucid dreaming. You can do whatever you want to do."

She looked up at him, eyes wet with unshed tears. "I'm afraid," she admitted.

Arthur kept his hand outstretched toward her. "I'll be with you the entire time," he told her. "You won't ever be alone again."

The wall disappeared in an instant, and Ariadne tumbled through it. Arthur rushed forward and caught her. The projections were still milling about aimlessly, resembling zombies more than people. They didn't look aware at all, eyes distant and vacant, lips parted slightly.

Pressing his lips against her temple, Arthur held Ariadne closely. "Let's go see what the house holds, all right? It's got to be a doozy of a secret."

Ariadne laughed weakly, letting Arthur draw her into the house. Her steps faltered on the porch, but Arthur pulled her into the living room after him. A small girl with wide eyes and curly brown hair looked up at him. Her shirt was torn, her skirt was askew, there was a bruise on her jaw and she was clutching a broken porcelain doll in her hands. "Daddy will hurt you," she said in Ariadne's voice.

Arthur held Ariadne as she started to shake. "Oh God," she moaned quietly. "I thought I'd forgotten it all," she whimpered. "I don't want to see this again."

He stroked her back gently. "You won't have to see. I'll leave you here with her, if you want."

"You don't have to keep going," she said, desperation rising in her voice.

"Yes, I do. You wanted me to see this, so I need to see it. Then we'll figure out why."

"Please don't," Ariadne whispered, looking at him with large eyes. The panicked, frightened face was mirrored on the girl's face. "Please don't look," they both told him, mouths moving in unison to form the words.

"I have to," Arthur told them. "Just a peek."

"He hurt me," the girl said, anger threading her voice. "Isn't that enough?"

Arthur looked at Ariadne's frightened face, and that protective urge shot through him again. He had never told her that he had looked through her personal data, cracking all the confidential files he could find. He knew what lay beyond those doors the girl was standing in front of. He knew what this house was, why she was so afraid of it. He knew exactly why, and that was the reason he had to continue.

This was her deepest secret, her deepest fear. This was the last thing holding her back.

"It's going to be all right," he assured her, holding his hand out to her. Ariadne took it, a slight tremor betraying her fear. "You need to see this."

"I don't want to know what's there," Ariadne whispered. She looked at Arthur beseechingly. "I don't need to know."

He held her tightly, pressing his lips to the top of her head. "Yes, you do. Otherwise you still have a weakness that someone might exploit. And you need to see what's there. Good or bad, you need to know what's there."

"Do you have anything that scares you?" she asked, sounding almost resentful.

"Yes," Arthur admitted softly. She needed to hear that, or else he never would have admitted that. "But I don't let the fear control me. I know it's there, and I work around it."

"What scares you?" she whispered.

He pulled back and smiled. "You'll have to extract it from me, Ariadne."

She looked at him indignantly as he strode forward past the five year old girl. He opened the door, knowing Ariadne was right behind him.

The living room was a mess, with stained and torn furniture, beer bottles everywhere and dirty dishes left over from a meal. "Clean that up," Ariadne's father told her in slurred tones, pointing at the table in the corner of the room. "Yer Mama wants this place clean after her shift at the plant, and ya gotta earn yer keep."

The five year old girl struggled to do as she was told, fearing the slaps or kicks that would come if she wasn't fast enough. She wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough. She never was, and the blows came down on her head and back. She tried to wriggle away from his grip, and he grasped hold of her shirt to yank her back. The shirt tore, and she stumbled and smashed her face into the table. Dishes and glasses went flying from her hands, shattering on the floor.

Her father started hitting her, and her mother returned in the middle of the beating. She pulled him off of their daughter, but he only turned his blows onto her. She struck back, hitting him upside the head with her purse. It was a full arc, something heavy in her purse colliding with his head. He stumbled backward, toward their bedroom, and the fight continued there. Her mother stumbled over his sprawling legs, falling to the floor. He had only fallen against their dresser, and his hands closed over the wooden jewelry box on it.

In a blind rage, he brought the box down over his wife's head. She shrieked in pain and rage and tried to push him off of her, but she had no leverage. He smacked her hands away, and a particularly wicked smash of the jewelry box against her temple stunned her. She couldn't fight back as he continued to smash the box against her head, long after she stopped moving. Blood was everywhere, and it was only the girl's frightened screams that made him stop and look down at the still body beneath him.

"Oh, God," he moaned, suddenly aware of the bloodied box in his hands. Some of the box was spattered in something thicker than blood, and he visibly shut down when he realized what it was clinging to the wood. He dropped the box, not comprehending the glittering spill of cheap jewelry falling out of it. "Oh, God," he moaned over and over. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, you have to believe me," he told the dead body. "I didn't mean to. I love you, I love you, I didn't mean to..."

He held out his hands toward the little girl. "Shush. Shush, baby girl. Daddy didn't mean it. Daddy still loves Mama." His face crumpled and he started to cry when he saw the girl cower back from him in fear. Blood covered his hands. "Oh, God. Oh, God..."

He turned back to the body and cradled it in his arms. He rocked it slightly, stroking the bloody hair and the dented bits of skull. "I love you. I can't do this. I can't live without you..."

The little girl looked on in horror as her father took his belt and wrapped it around his neck, then stood up on the bed to loop the other end to the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. He didn't even consider the girl as he slipped off of the edge of the bed, letting the belt constrict tighter around his throat.

"Daddy, no!" the girl shrieked, trying to catch her father's feet. She was too little and too weak to push him. "I promise I'll be good! I promise I'll be good!" she shrieked.

Ariadne watched them, tears streaming down her face. "I didn't remember this," she said, voice soft and broken. "I didn't want to..."

Arthur pulled her into his embrace. "I know, Ariadne. I know. But this wasn't your fault. This wasn't something you could stop."

She curled up against his chest, trembling in his arms. "Is something like this why you won't ever say you're in love? You're afraid something like this would happen? Or like Mal and Dom?"

"No," he said quietly. "I know people do all sorts of stupid things in the name of love. I never said it for us because it isn't the same. This is more than that. It's more than something that can warp like this. What we have is stronger. You don't depend on me to exist and you don't see me as half of your whole. You _are_ whole. Yes, there are cracks and glue and patches here and there, same as with me." He cradled her head in his hand, tenderly rubbing at her jaw with the ball of his thumb. "You're stronger than this, Ariadne."

"How can you say that?"

"You've risen to every challenge life has thrown at you," he said, looking at her intently. "This, foster care, college overseas, inception, every training exercise I've put you through. You've never once broken. You're like bone."

"What?" It was a startling comparison, and not one she had heard before.

"Every time it breaks, the mending sites are stronger than the original bone had been." Arthur smiled softly at her. "Yes, you're a collection of breaks, but that makes you stronger than you would have been otherwise."

Ariadne pulled him down for a kiss. The walls of the house faded away, until they were standing in the middle of a grassy park. Arthur slid his other hand down to undo her jeans, and she offered no resistance. If anything, she helped to shimmy out of her clothes and spread her legs enough to let him easily slide his fingers into her. She leaned into his touch, clutching at his shirt as he worked her to a frenzy. "Harder," she moaned, burying her face against the fabric. "Please, there, harder." She gasped as he followed her request. "Make me forget," she whispered.

"Don't forget," he growled, fingers curling as they slid over her clit. "You take this and you deal with it. You transform it into something better." He cradled her with one arm and kept up a rapid pace between her legs. "You're stronger than they were. You're more than they were. You're lovely, Ariadne. You're everything I've ever wanted and more."

Everything faded around them as the timer ran out on the PASIV. Arthur looked at Ariadne's sprawled form on the chaise and yanked out his line. She looked at him with damp eyes, but she wasn't crying. "Ariadne..."

"I've always tried to be so good for everyone," she said, voice thick with unshed tears.

"I know," he told her in grave tones. He did know; he had seen her files.

She pulled him toward her and their mouths met with a crash. Ariadne unceremoniously started pushing at his clothes, undoing the button and zipper at his fly, pushing everything off of her hips. When their kiss broke so that they could breathe, she stripped off her own clothing and dropped to her knees to take him into her mouth.

Arthur lifted her to her feet after a moment. "This won't make you forget," he said, urging her to walk backward. She walked jerkily and crashed into the couch, but shook off his steadying arm to brace herself against it. "Ariadne..."

"I know. I do know that. I need to feel something else, anything else."

Ariadne turned to head to the bedroom, but Arthur tipped her over the back of the couch and pushed his way inside her. She let out a ragged sigh of pleasure and relaxed into his touch. Her fingers scrabbled over the couch with every deep thrust, and he coaxed out moans and cries of pleasure from her. She was tight, too tight for him to last very long, and she didn't come by the time he did. He lifted her to her feet. "You didn't..."

"I don't care," she said, pulling his mouth down to meet hers. She tangled her fingers in his hair. "That's not what this is about," she said against his mouth after a moment.

He held her against him, not moving despite his urge to get her cleaned up. "Feel any better?" he asked her instead.

She shrugged, still wrapped in his arms. "What's your secret?" she asked, cheek pressed against his chest. She could hear his ragged heartbeat beneath her ear. Even though he looked so calm and put together, he was still coming down from his orgasm.

Arthur let out a weak burst of laughter. "You don't even need to pry it out of my head if you don't want to." He carded his fingers through her hair. He would never volunteer this for anyone else, and even Mal had to rip it out of his mind during a training exercise. "It's being alone. It's being empty inside and knowing that there's no one else that will ever understand it. It's being without a partner to share things with."

Ariadne looked up at him with large eyes. "Losing me, then."

His lips curled into a bitter smile. "I know I'll function if you ever leave. I'll still breathe and do the job and I won't ever fall apart the way Dom did. But there wouldn't be a point to anything. There wouldn't be anyone to share it with."

She ran her hand down his hip and let her fingers curl around the hip bone possessively. "How are we different, then? You say I'm lovely. You said that about Mal, too."

Arthur let his fingers run down the slope of her shoulder. "She wasn't whole, no matter what she thought about herself. She hid things about herself, denied what she was. She wanted the illusion that she was perfect, when she felt fractured." His smile was genuine, lighting up his eyes. "But you're different. You don't hide anything. You give me everything and expect everything back, and even if you feel like you're fractured, you aren't, not by a long shot."

"So what was she?" Ariadne asked, watching his expression carefully.

"Empty," Arthur replied, rubbing her shoulder with the ball of his thumb. "She liked breaking things to see what made them tick. She liked watching me bleed to death in dreams. She enjoyed the training exercises and she thought it meant she was a monster, so she hid it from Dom. She pretended she was perfect, but she was empty inside."

"Sometimes I enjoy those exercises," Ariadne told him evenly. "Does that make me a monster?"

"I don't know," he said, no inflection in his tone. "You tell me."

"I break you, but I know I can put you back together. I let you do things to me because I know you won't go any further than dreams." Her eyes were locked to his. "I trust you. I know you trust me." Her fingers tightened almost painfully on his hip, but Arthur didn't flinch, didn't move one muscle in response. "I could hurt you if I wanted to, and you'd let me."

"Yes, I would."

Her fingers relaxed at his calm tone, and she massaged his skin. "I won't, because I don't want to. But I could. I _could."_

"Everyone has that potential," he told her calmly, watching her face closely. She had been working this out for herself for some time. Perhaps that was what she was really scared of with this job, not whether or not she would be a good enough extractor. She was more afraid of what she would do _during_ the job.

"I can control it."

"Yes, you can. You do it wonderfully."

"We're not missing pieces of each other," she said slowly. "That's what you've been telling me all along. I think I didn't understand what you meant, because we do complement each other. We do fit each other."

"You'd survive if I was gone," Arthur said, his arm sliding down her back. "And I'd survive if you were gone. We don't need each other to function, to feel whole. We share things, and we'd be hurt if we lost each other, but it's not that same kind of codependency."

Ariadne's fingers tightened on his hip. "I don't want to lose you."

"I don't want to lose you, either. You're everything I've ever wanted."

She looked up at him, then slowly leaned forward to kiss his chest. "You're everything I never even knew I wanted." She smiled up at him. "We're the same, aren't we? Maybe not in the little details, but how it counts."

"In all the ways it matters," Arthur said, running his fingers down her spine.

Her satisfied smile was a mirror of his own. It was startling to see, and suddenly Arthur realized something. In making her perfect for him, he had opened himself to her as well. He hadn't held himself back as much as he thought he had, and the two of them had wound up shaping each other during their training sessions.

Arthur held her tightly and felt her arms encircle him just as tightly. They knew each other inside and out, on all levels, and there were no secrets from each other. They were perfect for each other because they had made themselves that way. He was her weakness as much as she was his, as strong and independent as they both were.

It probably should have terrified him, but Arthur found he couldn't care. Ariadne was perfect and lovely and _his,_ and that was all that mattered.

***  
***


	7. Putting Everything Into Practice

A musical cue seems to help; multimodal learning is often very helpful in solidifying memory traces and reinforcing the learning process. No sense in using Edith Piaf, too many references to Cobb and Mal. Classical music is generally held to be soothing, and that is precisely the effect I need.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #9

 

The design flowed smoothly, and the map was a complicated masterpiece. If there was anything Ariadne was confident about, it was that she could build an entire world that someone would believe in. She had the right amount of detail in it, just enough to make the subject fill in all the other necessary details to make it feel at home. That was never the part that made her nervous. It was going in on the extraction itself, it was taking the lead instead of following Arthur. That made her a little nervous; she wasn't sure she could live up to his high standards.

It did help to see him work around the traps her mind had set. Even the invisible wall didn't seem to faze him once he figured out what it was. Arthur treated everything like a puzzle to figure out, and was certain he would find an answer if he put his mind to it.

This would be her third job overall. It meant she was still too new and inexperienced with most things, even if Arthur's training helped her to progress farther than she would have otherwise. Training wasn't the same as the real world, and their minds knew each other. Ariadne didn't need to suppress her projections too much, since she knew Arthur would never harm her. Their subject wouldn't be as inclined to letting them root around in his mind unchecked.

Ariadne relaxed in the bath the night before their job, eyes closed and breathing in the steam. She felt Arthur standing in the doorway, watching her, and turned her face toward him without opening her eyes. "Yes?"

She heard his gentle chuckle. "Nothing. I just like watching you."

Cracking open her eyes, she took in the pleased expression on his face. It was one of his softer looks, the ones that people in the field didn't get to see. "Why not sit here, so you can get a better view?" she asked, patting the side of the tub.

Arthur snorted. "You'll pull me in with you."

"So?"

He considered that for a moment, then took off the shirt he was wearing. Dressed in just jeans and a thin white T shirt, he perched on the edge of the tub. "You don't look as nervous as before." He dipped his fingers beneath the bubbles and let them slide across her calf muscle.

"A little, still. Now it's more like how I was before the Fischer job, or the last one when we were in Monaco."

"More like anticipation."

"Exactly." Ariadne smiled as his fingers slid down to her ankle. "I'm going to do my best."

"I know you will." Arthur's lips curled into a possessive smile. "You've worked too hard not to."

"There is that," she admitted, smiling at him. Arthur seemed so calm, so unburdened. Sometimes she still wondered what he saw in her, why he didn't see her as a child he had to constantly teach the basics to. At other times, she caught the wonder in his eyes and knew she had every right to feel as though she belonged with him. That thin thread of self doubt constantly made her push herself, and everyone else seemed to think she was fearless. It was more that her fears were so very different from everyone else's.

Arthur leaned down to kiss her forehead. "It's an easy job. Simple extraction to get bank account numbers and access codes. The others were much harder, and you were fantastic."

Ariadne leaned up and kissed his mouth softly, smiling against his lips. "You're just buttering me up, aren't you?"

He pulled back and looked affronted. "I never joke about a job." Then he smiled, breaking the severe expression. "You'll be _fine,_ Ariadne. Really. I'm sure of it."

Giving in to temptation, Ariadne pulled on his T shirt to upset his balance. He tipped into the tub, splashing water everywhere and sputtering at her. Laughing delightedly, Ariadne leaned forward and grasped his face to kiss him.

Messing with Arthur was always a welcome distraction from her worries.

***

The spires of the dream city were high enough to almost blot out the sun. People walked about in a hurry, not making eye contact. Ariadne was dressed in a violet button down blouse, black pencil skirt and heels. She walked into the bank near the heart of the city and met with their subject, who was the branch manager. In the waking world, he was a stock broker that likely was participating in insider trading. Ariadne was calm as she mentioned wanting a safe place to keep her money, as well as stock and bond certificates she had inherited. She made sure to imply wealth and privilege, causing the subject to nearly salivate at the thought of getting his hands on her money.

"There is a safe place for all of this? Where I can keep my accounts?" she pressed.

His eyes flicked to the bank vault, which was really too easy to guess. Ariadne had simply wanted to be sure. "Of course," he said in falsely soothing tones. "Of course. Now, if we can set up the beginnings of the transactions..."

Ariadne signed the paperwork he gave her; the name she used was meaningless here, but it seemed to make him smile. She left and met up with Arthur outside in the parking lot. "No imagination whatsoever," she scoffed. "Bank vault."

Arthur grinned at her. "It's almost closing time, too." He crooked his arm at her. "Ready for some breaking and entering?"

"It's not breaking and entering if I have the key to get in," Ariadne laughed, heading toward the back of the bank. "Are the charges ready?"

He nodded briskly. "Set to go off in twenty minutes."

They waited for the twenty minutes, then a series of explosions went off at several bank branches within the dream city. The projections panicked, and the subject hurriedly closed the bank early to make sure no one would be injured. It was easy enough to walk into the bank and open the access panel to the vault. Inside were dozens of bank books, and Ariadne quickly memorized them. Just to be sure, Arthur memorized them as well.

Unhurried, they sat in a café and watched the projections mill about in a panic.

"I guess I didn't have to worry," Ariadne mused, sipping on a cappuccino. She took in Arthur's smug expression. "Don't even tell me 'I told you so,' Arthur," she warned. "I'm not in the mood to hear that."

"I thought you would do just fine." He looked at his watch. "The kick should come in another hour, unless you want to leave early."

Ariadne looked around the dream city. The small house she had grown up in that had been in her own version of the maze wouldn't be here, and she almost wanted to see what would be standing in its place. After a moment, she decided she didn't need to know. She sipped the cappuccino and looked at Arthur. "We can use a little calm before we report in. Do you want to do anything after this? You don't have any jobs lined up."

"I didn't want you to feel like I'm rushing you."

"I don't feel rushed at all," she said, shaking her head. She put down the cup. "I know we don't _have_ to work, but I want to. I want to be busy. I want to do something. I can't just sit around doing nothing."

Arthur watched her, nodding. "I'm sure I can put the word out that we want to work. In the meantime, is there anything you want to do?"

Drumming her fingers on the table, Ariadne thought for a moment. "Not really. We can always visit the Cobbs again." She smiled as she remembered their prior visit. "I like the kids a lot, actually. And you seemed to be getting along a lot better with Dom."

"He even almost apologized."

"No," she said in mock horror. It forced a sliver of a smile on Arthur's face, which she liked to see. He was too stern otherwise.

"He admitted he might have burned some bridges to get to his kids. Might have," he stressed once Ariadne lit up. "He's still self centered and didn't actually apologize for putting us all in danger on that job."

Ariadne reached across the table and took his hand. "Maybe someone else has to show him how to gain forgiveness."

"That won't be me," Arthur replied evenly.

She didn't doubt his word on that. He was entirely too stubborn sometimes, and there was a coldness to him that didn't seem to thaw unless he was with her. She knew that made her special in his world; everyone else was a potential threat to maneuver around. There were very few people he trusted in the business, let alone on a personal level. Cobb had been one of them, and his behavior had violated that trust pretty badly. He was hurt, even if he would never admit it, and Ariadne knew only time would heal that kind of wound.

She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. He looked on in amusement, and she smiled up at him. "You like the kids." He nodded stiffly. "Then that's the only reason you'd go. It wouldn't be to forgive Dom."

"I _don't_ forgive him."

"I know. I'm not asking you to, you know. Maybe he'll think you do, and after a while he'll apologize. Maybe he'll earn it. When I pointed out that he had issues, I didn't think you'd just cut contact with him afterward. You have every right to be mad at him, and he needs to make it up to you somehow."

Arthur looked at her intently. "Are you sure?"

"You're right about other things, you know," Ariadne said softly, still holding his hand in hers. "I can't ignore things I don't want to think about. I can't just bury memories and not expect them to impact me somehow. I can't avoid the dirty parts of the business if I want to live out the rest of my life with you."

He blinked at her slowly. "So you're sure."

Ariadne nodded. "He's broken, Arthur. He doesn't have anyone else, and with the way he keeps on going, he never will. But if we show him what it's like to really know someone, darkness and all, then maybe he'll be able to start fixing himself. And then he'd be able to ask forgiveness for what he did."

"You're an optimist," he scoffed.

She smiled. "Maybe. I balance your pessimism."

Arthur laughed as music began to play. "That's our cue."

She nodded. "Let's get paid."

***

"I'm not in right now, so leave a message and contact information, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can," Cobb's voice said over the phone.

"Message," Ariadne told Arthur, smiling when she heard the beep. "Hey, it's me. We were wondering if we could stop by for a visit with you and the kids. We're in between jobs at the moment, and I'd love to see—"

Cobb picked up the phone. "Ariadne! I was just washing dishes in the kitchen."

"How domestic," she laughed, leaning back against Arthur. They were sitting on the bed in their hotel room, and Ariadne hadn't wanted to go home just yet.

"Tell me about it," Cobb laughed along with her. "It's pathetic, since it's just my stuff in the sink. Phillipa and James are in Paris with Stephen, if you wanted to visit just them," he teased.

"We're actually in Hong Kong," Ariadne told him. "I guess we'll just have to settle with visiting you in LA, then. There's always the holidays to see the kids."

"Holidays?" Arthur said, eying her with a forbidding glance. He obviously didn't want to share her, and she stuck her tongue out at him playfully.

"I know I'd like that," Cobb said, voice softening a fraction. "Tell Arthur I said hi."

"Tell him yourself. Hang on a sec!" Ariadne chirped, thrusting her phone at him. He glowered at her, clearly displeased, but let his features smooth out once he took the phone.

"Hey, Dom," Arthur said, voice not betraying his feelings at all. "How are you?"

"Doing good," he replied, his voice warm with emotion. "I'd love to have you guys over for a while. When were you thinking of coming in?"

"It's kind of a spur of the moment thing," Arthur said somewhat stiffly, looking at Ariadne's bright face. She refused to be cowed by his expression, and merely beamed at him. "I haven't even looked into flights yet."

"Well, give me a call when you know what time your flight comes in. I'm not doing anything right now, so I can pick you up from LAX."

"I thought you had that job at the design company."

"I do. It's _Saturday._ If your flight comes in tonight or tomorrow, I can pick you up."

Ariadne could clearly hear Cobb's side of the conversation and couldn't help but snicker. Arthur clearly hadn't been intending to fly out right away, but now he was more or less caught. She didn't feel bad about that manipulation at all, and said loudly "We'll look for flights right now! I can't wait to see you!"

"Sounds great," Cobb laughed. "I look forward to it. Give me a call or a text, and I'll get you from your flight."

Arthur simply glowered at Ariadne after hung up the phone. "I didn't intend to fly _today."_

She sidled up to him and practically purred as she ran her fingers over his chest. "I figured we should go now, while you agree to."

"Trying to manage me?" he asked in arch tones.

Laughing, Ariadne nodded. "I think it's working, too."

"I should punish you for that," he replied, grasping her tightly in his arms. His voice was light and teasing, but he let the dark and dangerous look flash in his eyes.

"Tease," she replied, grinning up at him. She wasn't afraid of that look. In fact, she thought perhaps she was mirroring it back to him.

He kissed her thoroughly, nipping at her bottom lip hard. "Fine, I'll book the flight. You owe me for this trip."

"Real space or dream space?" Ariadne asked playfully.

"It depends how bad the trip goes." He kissed the tip of her nose. "And I'm the one that decides if it goes badly or not."

Ariadne snickered but agreed. At least he was going.

***  
***


	8. End Of The Line

Cobb looked rested and pleased to see them. He and Arthur exchanged nods, and he hugged Ariadne tightly. He eyed her closely after a moment. "Did everything go okay?"

Ariadne smiled at him. "Of course it did. Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "I guess I was just a little surprised you'd visit again so soon."

She laughed. "Do I need an excuse to visit a friend?"

Cobb's expression relaxed, even if Arthur's didn't. "I guess I was worried that you needed a place to hide for a while."

"I'd never endanger the children that way," Ariadne said, patting his arm. "It's all right. We're between jobs and I just wanted to see how you're doing. Really. No underhanded reason for showing up today, I promise."

Conversation on the ride back to Cobb's home flowed easily, and Arthur even joined in on occasion when it turned to the dream share scene. As much as Cobb wasn't actively involved any longer, he was still curious about it. He didn't want to admit that he missed the jobs he used to take, since he had decided he would be a full time father with a regular civilian job.

Arthur started discussing the job in Monoco over dinner when Cobb asked for updates regarding their coworkers from the Fischer job. "It was a fairly simple job," Arthur said, shrugging. "I took over point and Eames did the extraction. Serge handled the top layer and Ariadne watched over all of us."

"And it was a damn good thing, too," Ariadne added with a laugh. "If not for me, all of you would've been dead."

Cobb looked over at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I know Serge didn't think there would be any problems getting to the subject," Ariadne said, shrugging. "But the girlfriend was this unpredictable and dramatic kind of girl. Apparently they had an argument the day before we did the job. She came back intending to apologize and make up, and saw us there. She took exception to what was going on." She laughed. "I took exception to her taking exception, though."

Blinking in surprise, Cobb looked at her smug expression and then at Arthur's calm one. "What happened next?" he prompted.

"I killed her," Ariadne said blithely, shrugging. "I started the cue on time and I was in the middle of making it look like a suicide when everyone woke up."

There was a vague sense of horror in Cobb's expression, though he shook his head. "That's..."

"It was good to have a little help, though," Ariadne mused. "She was kind of heavy for me to lift on my own, so I was pretty tired by the time all the guys woke up."

"You're very modest," Arthur said when Cobb seemed speechless. "It was efficient," he told Cobb, smiling slightly. "I checked into the situation afterward, just to be sure we were all in the clear, and it was accepted by the subject and all of their friends as something she would have been likely to do."

"Oh, don't tell me you're worried, too," Ariadne said with a laugh at Cobb's stunned expression. "I swear, everyone's so overprotective. I'm fine, Dom, really. It all worked out in the end, and we just finished another job."

"Which you didn't need to be worried about," Arthur intoned, a teasing lilt in his smile. He laughed when Ariadne playfully threatened to toss her fork at him. "She did great on the job, and was even the primary extractor for it, as well as architect."

"Expanding the repertoire, so to speak," Ariadne supplied helpfully when Cobb didn't pipe up right away. "It worked for you, after all. I figured I should try that out."

"I don't know if that's always the best route to take," Cobb began, voice uncertain. "It can be pretty dangerous sometimes..."

"That's what my job is all about," Arthur replied easily, smiling at Ariadne. "Just about everything was accounted for, so it went smoothly."

Cobb blinked at his confident tone and looked at Arthur. "You've been the best point man I've ever worked with. And I did have the misfortune of working with a few morons before we met."

"Mal was a good extractor," Arthur said quietly. He raised his wine glass a little. "To Mal. We never did mourn her properly, and her loss touched us all."

Ariadne had lifted her glass, and Cobb did as well. They all drank in silence. "It's not as painful now," he said after a moment, looking almost uncomfortable. "But it still hurts."

"It was a big loss for you," Ariadne said gently, patting his hand affectionately. "It's not something you simply get over. The kids probably help. They're wonderful, Dom. You must be so proud of them."

His expression softened. "They're great. Sometimes they remind me of Mal, and sometimes they're entirely their own selves. It's amazing to be here to watch them grow up."

Arthur's expression was a little less tight as well. Ariadne knew that he didn't want to admit to having a soft spot for the kids, but he did. "You needed to be here for them. I'm glad we were able to get you back home."

"You know, you can always retire and live out here near us," Cobb said suddenly, looking at the both of them with a hopeful expression. He looked at Ariadne. "I can introduce you to the firm where I work now. Between that and Stephen's recommendations, you would definitely get hired. I'm certain of it."

"That's so sweet," Ariadne said with a smile. "Maybe one day, when I think about slowing down a little or getting out of the business. Right now, I really like it. This is where I want to be, in the middle of dream sharing."

"She's brilliant. It's amazing, watching her work," Arthur said proudly, grinning at her. "Probably more likely we'd rope you back into a safe job if you ever wanted to come back in." He shook his head with a smile. "I know you say you have to stay off the radar for the kids, but you know I'd only even request the safe ones for you. I'd never let anything bad happen to those kids."

Cobb looked between the two of them. "I know that. You care about Phillipa and James. You always have."

Ariadne helped to clear the dinner table at this lull, intending to give Arthur and Cobb time alone to talk about things. Arthur was clearly in a better frame of mind, and Cobb was waxing nostalgic. Most of the time, that tended to mean bonding.

They were talking about dream sharing when she returned to the dining room, using hushed tones as if Phillipa and James were still in the house. It looked almost like when she had first seen them together in the warehouse, conferring on things. There was an intensity in both of their gazes, a seriousness that tuned out the rest of the world.

Then Arthur's phone trilled, breaking the spell.

Arthur took the phone call on the back porch, and Cobb noticed her in the dining room. He looked at her in concern. "You've changed, Ariadne."

She looked at him in surprise; though he had sometimes eyed her oddly at times, she hadn't seen this shift in the conversation coming. "What do you mean?"

"You're different," Cobb said quietly, concern in his eyes. "Harder in spots. The things you laugh at now, I think you would have bitten my head off about when we first met."

"What are you talking about?"

He shook his head at her genuine confusion. "The jobs you just told me about. You were diametrically opposed to killing anyone."

"I didn't kill anyone in Hong Kong! That one went off without a hitch!"

"In Monaco, then," Cobb insisted, shaking his head. "You killed a woman with no regrets and faked her suicide. That's not the Ariadne I knew."

Ariadne looked at him with narrowed eyes, anger rising. "You didn't know me, Cobb. You pushed me away every chance you got and I had to go digging to see what was shaking apart the job. You put everyone at risk for your own personal gain and never once thought about what it would do to the rest of us. I _had_ to help, and you're damn lucky I was there." She pointed at his chest. "I'm doing what needs to be done, no more, no less."

"That's what I'm talking about," he said, arms spread wide. "You're doing what's expedient, not what's right."

"We're _thieves,_ Dom," Ariadne pointed out. "Nothing that we do is right. Or have you forgotten that? You're the one that told me it wasn't strictly speaking legal. What did you expect would happen once I got started?"

"I didn't expect you stay in the business!" Cobb shot back, exasperated. "I promised Stephen you'd be there just for the job to get me home, and then you'd get back to your ordinary life and be safe."

"You had no right to promise that," she hissed. "You asked us to open our minds to you, to do you a favor, and you had _no right_ to assume I'd simply follow your instructions. Which you didn't really give, by the way. You never explained the dangers in that job or any job in the dream share business. If all I had was your instruction, we might all be dead right now, and your children would be orphans!"

Arthur was poised on the threshold of the back door, but neither Cobb nor Ariadne noticed him reenter the house. His jaw was clenched tight as he took in the scene in front of him, but he didn't move yet.

"That's a low blow," Cobb told her, shaking his head.

"I learned more from Arthur than you ever thought I'd need to know," she continued.

"Is that why you're with Arthur?" he asked. "Haven't you learned anything from my mistakes with Mal?"

"You have no right to question how I do things. You have no idea how insulting you sound right now," she said, shaking her head in disgust. "Arthur and I would _never_ mix up reality like that. Things might not work the way you think they should, but that's the way the world works out there, Dom. I'm not your child, not your responsibility. I'm a grown woman and I've been on my own for a long time."

"Ariadne, you were never meant to stay involved in this business. You were supposed to have an ordinary life and not get into crime."

 _"I don't want an ordinary life."_

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Ariadne could see that he still didn't understand what she was trying to tell him. "I have the life I want. I'm building entire worlds that I could never build with any architecture firm. I'm able to travel the world. I have a partner to share things with, one that trusts my judgment. Maybe you don't like how things are between us, but I do. This is what I want. If I need to kill someone to keep him safe, so be it. I know he would do the same for me in a heartbeat."

"You shouldn't _want_ to kill anyone!"

"That isn't even what I said! Were you listening? It's not _want to._ If I _need_ to, that's a different story. I will do whatever it takes to keep him safe. I will do whatever it takes to get the job done." She pressed her hands together in front of her face, her fingers resting against her lips as she tried to control her temper. "I'm being practical, Dom. It's not that I'm lost in the romance in the relationship, but I'm not an innocent anymore."

Cobb ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "You shouldn't have lost that."

"Then you shouldn't have gotten me to draw those mazes for you," she retorted. "You shouldn't have shown me this world, what I could really do. You introduced me to this world, and my eyes are wide open about what it will take to stay in it. Maybe yours never were."

"I did what I had to do to get home," he replied, shaking his head. "That's all it ever was."

"You were a _thief._ No matter how you justify it to yourself, that's what you did. You don't get to point your finger at me as if somehow I'm less than human because of what I'm doing. You did the exact same thing."

She knew she was hurting him with her words, but she couldn't quite care. His accusation that she was an innocent hurtling toward her doom pained her. She wasn't an innocent anymore. She was new to the dream scene, and she was building up a resume, but she wasn't quite the innocent he wanted to paint her as. Cobb wasn't seeing _her,_ only the version of her that he had in his head. He was disregarding the rest of her, keeping the shell of the ingénue he thought he had corrupted. It was exactly the same mistake he had made with Mal all over again.

"I had a purpose," he corrected. "You don't."

"I do have a purpose, Dom," Ariadne said, shaking her head. "I'm leaving my mark on the business. I'm shaping it to what _I_ want, not the other way around."

"That's not how it works," he disagreed.

"You don't get it!" Ariadne shouted, poking him in the chest. "You don't see _me_ here, you see what you think of me. You see me as someone you have to save. I'm capable of saving myself, Dom. I don't need you looking out for me. There wasn't anybody doing it for me for a long time, and I can fucking take care of myself. It's the same with Mal. You saw what you wanted to see, and you saw someone you couldn't save. The rest of the world doesn't work that way, Dom. There's layers. There's depth. There are parts of people you will never learn and they will never let you. And that's how the world works. You don't see that. Maybe you've never seen that, I don't know."

He was shaking his head, and it was enough for him to see Arthur standing still in the corner of the kitchen. "Arthur..."

Ariadne turned to look at him, her own eyes hollow. There would be no forgiveness for this, she knew. Arthur was a stubborn bastard when he wanted to be, and he would never forgive Cobb for making her angry. He would never forgive this insult to her intelligence, just as he couldn't forgive the lack of trust on the Fischer job. He had given all of himself to Cobb, just to be thrown away as soon as it was convenient to do so. Cobb didn't even realize what he had done, how deeply the cut had wounded Arthur.

She had liked Cobb, but she didn't have the same sense of loyalty or trust that Arthur had. She had never really trusted Cobb to keep his own projections in check. He didn't know himself as well as Arthur did, so he couldn't control them. He was deluding himself if he thought he understood others. He might have been one of the best extractors, but that had been because he was singleminded and selfish. It wasn't because he understood how people worked at all. She had learned how to read people at an early age, but seemed as though that gift wasn't very common.

Arthur walked right past Cobb without acknowledging him. Cobb flinched, though he didn't seem to understand what he had done.

Ariadne knew that their rift was irreparable now.

She grabbed his arm when he moved to follow Arthur to talk to him. "Don't," she warned. "He's too angry with you right now."

Cobb shook her off. "I've known Arthur for a long time, Ariadne," he said, vague condescension in his tone. "I can talk to him."

"No," she warned. "He already was angry with you for how you casually dismissed him after the Fischer job when you couldn't use him anymore. Now that you're casually dismissing _me_ when we've both made it pretty damn clear that what we have works? You don't trust him, not in the way that it counts." She shook her head. "Maybe there's no point in staying here any longer. I'll call Professor Miles when we get to Paris and I'll get updates on the kids that way."

"Ariadne, don't say that," he said in a wheedling tone. "We're friends."

"Well, you have a pretty shitty way of treating your friends," Ariadne told him bluntly. He didn't have much to say in response, and Ariadne went upstairs after Arthur. He was her priority, and he always would be.

***

Arthur was packing their belongings into the two small carry on bags they had brought with them from Hong Kong. Ariadne watched him for a moment; his movements were sharp and precisely controlled, not jerky in the slightest. It didn't mean he wasn't angry. It was all in the way his eyes were tight, his jaws were clenched and there was the sensation that he would turn around and pull a gun on whoever tried to touch him right then.

Ariadne sat down on the bed in the guest room they had assumed they would stay in. She was quiet for a moment, watching as he zipped the bags shut. Her hand fell onto his, her touch light and easily shaken off if he wanted to.

He didn't, and merely looked at her. "I won't put up with that," he told her finally.

"I know," she said quietly, her fingers sliding across the back of his hand to curl along the inside of his wrist. It was a soothing gesture when he allowed it to be. "We can go to a hotel, do some kind of tourist thing while we're here. It doesn't have to be a wasted trip."

Arthur's eyes flashed with irritation. That was a placating kind of statement, and he hated those with a passion. "It's not wasted. Now we know we're never coming back. There's nothing for us here anymore."

Cobb had corrupted Mal and twisted her memory into something shallow. He would be damned if he would allow Cobb to do it again, especially after all the hard work he had put in to make Ariadne into the stunning piece of perfection that she was.

"I'm sorry," Cobb said from the doorway. He flinched when Arthur turned his furious gaze toward him. Arthur felt nothing one way or another about that. He didn't even care enough about Cobb now to want to hurt him back. "I'm not just saying that," he continued, a little uncertainly when Arthur didn't say anything. "I really am sorry for everything I've said."

It was a qualifier that Arthur didn't think Cobb even realized he was using. He wasn't sorry for what he had done or how he thought about them, only for what he said that got him into trouble. He still didn't think about the consequences until they were too late.

"I don't forgive you," Arthur told him shortly. "You destroyed Mal and I'm sure as hell not going to let you destroy us."

Cobb came forward, hands outstretched in a placating gesture. "Arthur, look..."

"No." His tone was curt and formal, which he had never used with Cobb before. "You feel the need to lecture us, disregarding the fact that we know what we're doing. It's not even that, because you're hardly the only one to do it. _Eames_ of people wanted to express his concern for us," Arthur spat, lip curling in derision.

"He doesn't know you like I do," Cobb said, shaking his head.

"Do you?" Arthur challenged, eyes flashing and voice cold. Cobb was startled at the sight of it, since he had never been on the receiving end of the full transformation before. "Eames had his own personal demons that he was warning us from, too. He might have been worried more for Ariadne's sake, but it was worry that I was coddling her too much. That I was overprotective. He never once doubted her ability to do her job or make her own decisions, and that all went away once he saw for himself that she could do what needed to be done. He doesn't doubt her capabilities, and that's all you're doing."

"This _changed_ her, don't you care about that?" Cobb cried, pointing at Ariadne. Her eyes had gone wide at the statement. "How can you drag her through all of this?"

There was no Glock to pull out and threaten him with; Arthur had to leave it behind in Paris due to security and customs restrictions. That had made it easier to fly to LAX from Hong Kong, but now made it difficult to quickly assuage his temper.

For this, he was willing to get messy and not simply wait to let loose with a PASIV.

"You need to walk away, Dom," Ariadne said, rising to her feet. "You need to apologize, shut up and walk away."

"How can you both be okay with this?" Cobb cried, looking at them. "There's something wrong with you, Ariadne. I don't know how you can't see it. There's something deeply wrong with you, and you need to fix it."

"I don't need fixing," Ariadne told him, her eyes flashing in irritation.

Cobb looked between the both of them, stunned. "Oh, God. She's like you, Arthur. That look on her face is exactly like yours." He backed up a step. "Did you change her? Did you do this? What the hell have you done?"

Arthur narrowed his eyes at Cobb, feeling his temples throb. This would become a migraine if Cobb didn't shut up and simply leave, but Cobb never did do things the ordinary way. "You want to leave this alone, Dom." There was a warning in his tone, but he wasn't sure that Cobb would take it. He didn't listen when he was convinced he was onto something. It was what led him to get caught up in Mal's machinations at the very end, what led him to continue working with Cobol when Arthur told him to stop, and led to the inception.

"You did, didn't you?" Cobb cried, incredulous. "You didn't listen to a single word I said about Mal, and you fucked with her head! How could you?"

"Shut up!" Ariadne cried as Arthur simply reached out and grasped Cobb by the throat. "That's not how it is. That's not how it happened!"

"Ask him," Cobb wheezed, staring at Arthur. He was disturbed by whatever he saw in Arthur's eyes, by the empty gaze staring back at him. "He changed you," he said, fingers grasping at Arthur's hand at his throat. "He did something to your mind. He's infected it. He's changed you on such a fundamental level you don't even know he did it."

"Arthur would never hurt me," Ariadne told Cobb, jaw tight with anger. "He would never put me in danger, never." She shook her head at him, a look of betrayal in her eyes. "We're going to leave now. We're not coming back."

Arthur hit Cobb's throat with his hand, his rage flowing over him white hot. He couldn't even _think_ straight, even with Ariadne's hand on his back to try to calm him. He didn't shake her off, but he simply tuned it out. "You're not going to threaten this," he snarled, pushing Cobb backward. "You're not going to ruin everything."

He watched dispassionately as Cobb wrenched himself away and tumbled down the flight of stairs to the ground floor. Cobb winced in pain as he hit the landing, winded and disbelieving of the turn of events. Arthur descended the stairs slowly, his mind blank. There was nothing in it but hatred and the desire to make Cobb _stop._

He felt nothing when he hit Cobb in the throat again. Cartilage collapsed with this blow, and Cobb tried to suck in air ineffectually. Arthur knelt down over him and felt nothing as he watched his former friend try to kick away from him, tumbling from the landing. "It wasn't inception, Dom," Arthur said in such a low tone that he knew Ariadne didn't hear him. "I shaped her. It wasn't even hard. She _wanted_ this." Cobb's eyes were large, and he scratched at his throat ineffectually, as if he could pull the cartilage out of his windpipe.

Arthur stood over Cobb, face impassive and unfeeling. Ariadne descended the last few steps as Cobb died, steps light and tentative. Ariadne carefully stepped around the body. There was concern in her expression, but no doubts in Arthur whatsoever. Whatever she thought about this, she didn't believe what Cobb had been saying. She didn't think he had warped her.

"Come on. We're going to have to do something about this."

Arthur turned to her, the present snapping into focus. He was the point man. He was the planner, and this was his area of expertise. He didn't often follow his murderous impulses, if only because there usually were too many goddamn bystanders. Cobb's house was isolated, the children were away and there was only a phone message to indicate they were coming.

"I know what you're thinking," Ariadne said, resting her hand on his wrist. "For Phillipa and James, don't leave them guessing what happened. Please."

"Then what do you suggest?" he asked tightly, his voice sharper than he intended.

She didn't seem to be insulted by it. "Stage a break in. We found him this way."

"It'll be too goddamn suspicious."

"Who would doubt my face?" she asked softly, head tilting to the side. "Especially if I start crying and wailing and carrying on?"

"You used to say he was your friend," Arthur said stiffly. "Now?"

"I meant what I said," she replied quietly, lacing her fingers through his. "I will do anything it takes to keep you safe."

***

LAPD arrived in response to a hysterical phone call about a break in and murder. A young couple had been visiting their friend, and was just returning from getting dessert for dinner when they found their friend dead. The back door had been broken into, the front door left open when they arrived. Remnants of dinner were still in the kitchen, and the den was in utter disarray. The couple didn't know if anything had been taken, and the young woman was utterly devastated by the loss. One of the officers was left with her by the front door, occasionally handing her tissues to sob into. They had checked her name against LAX flight manifests and found it in the records from Hong Kong, as was her fiancé's name. He preferred his middle name of Arthur and she sometimes went by her nickname Ariadne; hearing their message on the phone brought forth fresh sobs from Ariadne. She collapsed onto a chair, and Arthur tried to politely answer questions when he clearly wanted to be by her side.

"We heard a noise during dinner, but I didn't think anything of it," he told the police officer questioning him. "I figured it was the house settling or something. Dom didn't want to go out for dessert, so we offered to get some pastries and bring them back. We weren't even gone that long," he said, frowning. There was even a pastry box with an assortment of items from a bakery about a half hour away round trip.

"Oh my God, Phillipa and James," Ariadne suddenly cried and sobbed into a new tissue. "They already lost Mal. How are they going to deal with this?"

"What?" the officer next to her asked, confused by her abrupt shift in topic.

"The kids. Their mother died a few years ago. It was horrible. And they're with their grandfather right now. Oh, God, if they had been here..." Ariadne began, eyes wide with horror as she looked at the police office.

"Please, officer," Arthur asked, trying to contort his face into one of fear and concern. He gestured vaguely toward Ariadne and went to her side as soon as the officer nodded at him. He pulled her into a tight hug. "We'll call. It's okay. They're going to be okay," he said, rubbing her back in a soothing manner as she cried against his chest.

The police wrapped up what they needed and offered to escort them to a hotel, as Cobb had driven them from the airport. The officers made soothing and comforting nonsense statements, and then let them go with assurances that they would do everything in their power to find the party responsible for killing their friend.

Arthur looked at Ariadne as they settled into the hotel room. He watched as she efficiently unzipped the two carry on bags and started to move their belongings into the dresser and closet, putting his toiletries where he preferred them in the bathroom. Her eyes were luminous as she approached him, then she reached out and grabbed his tie to pull his mouth down to hers. She responded enthusiastically when he deepened this kiss.

Breaking off their kiss for air, her eyes searched his face. "I'll call Stephen, then."

"The kids would be too much for him on a long term basis," Arthur said, stroking her face. "We can take them in, adopt them. We'll give them stability."

"You're sure?" she breathed, hope sparking in her eyes.

"We won't leave them behind," Arthur assured her, stroking her face. "They're family. They're important. We're going to be there for them through this, through whatever else will happen. I know we can change our work schedule around theirs, making whatever changes we need to. You'll help me," he added, letting his hand drop to her shoulder. "I couldn't do something like this without you."

"I love you, Arthur. Thank you."

He kissed her forehead gently and let her make the phone call. Her voice trembled in all the right places as she spoke to Stephen. Arthur couldn't imagine how devastated he would be in finding out that Dom was dead. That didn't matter to him. Only Ariadne did.

He watched over her, an almost pleased expression on her face as he sat on the bed of the hotel room. "Yes, of course," she was saying. "You'd always be welcome in our home, Stephen. You're like family," she said softly, true concern in her voice. "It's not just dreaming or school now, you know. I'd never want Phillipa or James to forget their parents, and we'd all help them remember the good parts of them."

Ariadne nodded at whatever Miles was saying, though he couldn't see it. "Yes, yes, absolutely. I wouldn't want to rush things either." Arthur pulled her close to him as she paced back and forth, and she let herself be pulled to stand between his spread legs. She smiled down at him as she listened to Miles' reply. "There's no reason for us to stay in LA now, unless you want us to do anything with the house?"

Arthur caressed her hip slowly as she finished her conversation with Miles. She hung up and tossed her phone onto the bed carelessly. "He'll call Marie and tell her. She might protest the adoption idea, since she took care of them last time, but her health isn't as good as it was. He thinks she might agree to let us take care of the kids if she can visit whenever she wants."

"She never liked Dom anyway," Arthur told her.

"You really don't care that he's dead, do you?" she asked him, voice soft.

"No." He waited a moment. "Does it bother you that you helped me cover it up?"

Ariadne thought about it for a moment, wanting to give him an honest answer. "No."

Arthur let the corners of his lips curl into something vaguely resembling a smile. "Lovely." Just as he knew she would be, right from the beginning.

 

Based on my prior research, "A" certainly lacks a coherent and stable sense of family. The best approach would be to begin to establish a connection with her, replacing the emptiness of her past with a more hopeful appearing future.  
\- excerpt from personal journal #1

The End


End file.
